Leviticus Rising

“Leviticus Rising”


You left me longing for voices like yours.
Shut in devoid rooms, beyond silent doors
You left the reply of the unanswered question:
A body beside me that was a projection
Of desire in the tomb that became a bed,
Where I lay beside the words you never said.

I cried into your words that cut the deepest.
Which of my tears tasted the sweetest?
Then it seemed you dared not swallow
For fear of such taste as sorrow.
And though tomorrow, stars may follow
It is clear between the hours of our firsts and lasts
That we are nothing more than outcasts,
Banished to repeat in vain; to capture what was:
Such things as they will sing about us
In saddened and sweet undertones
When history forgets the earth around our bones.

What loves are forgotten? What love fades away?
Will they sing songs about us someday?
Or shall we go voiceless into the falling snow
As others went silent to their winters long ago?
Dying, shall our blood be upon us—this sin unforgiven;
That you somehow made feel human—
Was it for that blood that we lay abreast?
Was it Hell we longed for in our eternal rest?

Gladly will I burn, for it is you I cherish.
Those thousand torments I shall relish,
For I loved you; no flame can burn that away.
It is not to the God who hates me that I pray
That I shall bleed, and in bleeding sing,
For no Hell, no Infernal suffering
Can alter the Grand Design,
Can take away that you were mine.
Let me burn. I will burn for two,
I will burn for my sin, and the sin in you
As long as it is known by God on High
That love like this will never die.

© 2022 Marten Hoyle