Death's Midden

I.

Mere dust, it is said, moulded
not with hands, the fair forms rising
peace-browed from their Procrustean
bed, the only image and likeness.
Or to fancy, a more composite mix
kenning the lesson of experience.
Rather shingle, root ends, baleful seeds
biding their chance to burst, ill
humors, all that is rough cast, flawed,
clawed up from the earth’s bowels.
Behold the mud man, arms drooping, fists
knotted, squint-eyed, blunt jaw set
obstinately against the heavens.
Yet, like some fell recompense, all must
resolve, fall away, sink, slide to
that which generated it, death’s
midden, mouth toothless and voracious.
Cronos devouring each his children
limb by bloodied limb.
Where matters not, whether
wind-scoured upland hillside, jungle clearing
where the heat sinks, or on northern plain.
In a myriad places we lie together
nameless as the wind, not waiting
but rotting, falling as one and at last
to the patient worm.

II.

Wordless, like an acolyte at a mystery
seeking the epiphany of the god, I
have waited on your inscrutability,
O death.
I have watched the shifting light
of faces, rally, fade, both dark and bright
tracing through the ageless, sullen night,
O breath.
Through alchemy or sleight of hand
the living being turned to sand,
brittle, life-like but a lie, and
O death
I was bereft, quite unmanned.

III.

You were not wrong to doubt
old man
for you had seen woe in plenty.
Not new for you the death
of hope,
the stark day mewling like
an abandoned child
and love lost.
You looked around their rapt faces
and a thorn pierced your heart.
To lose again is to lose
thrice, for the fresh wound still
smokes hurt.
So you doubted and caged your
love in reason’s fingers
like a struggling bird.

Yet, O
and yet, life
entered the locked room
as the earth trembled,
Thomas.

IV.

Is it a dream or a sense
of what has always been?
The place which is no-where
and at all times open, in sleep,
visions or moments when
the dullest mountain is transfigured
for no apparent reason.
What do the sleepers say who
dream on in the loam, their limbs
unloosened by the roots of the world?
They say death is a braggart, a loud
lout to some, but to others he comes
gently, blithely, as a courting maid.
His is the key
that turns each way, both to
lock and to release.
Kindly,
He merely means our peace.