“And in those days men shall seek death, and shall not find it: and they shall desire to die, and death shall fly from them.”
Apocalypse 9:6
I
Though I cried out
From beyond the gulf,
I was as mute,
And though I stood so near to her
There was only a sign of motion
Collapsing into the utter silence.
Despair was met with
The singular cause, and
All things being uninterrupted,
There was no final end, only
The shying glances of the inward man
Now broken by the perpetual trees
That grow in no unnatural order
Along these stony grounds.
I am older now,
Yet I am no more myself
Than before this wreck.
Two streams of consciousness
That do not intersect
May have begun their course again, further,
But will not meet again
By this tree, for if all was lost
At least there would have been
No more of this dying sun,
No more of this sky soaked in
The fallow cries of cranes
That may yet reach the golden herds.
II
We have no mother, and
No hour of birth is known
By these stars,
Falling out of the aether in
Streams of white fire,
Existing yet in memory.
These were the totems of our life;
Our path was tread lightly by the passage
Of these frail bodies.
When the last one falls,
There will be no more gods
Who stand sure and steady.
Only the drops of rain,
Only the clapping hands of Jove
Will pass for signs.
In all this will I make my bed of thorns
And pray for death.
H. Ellis Williams was born in Regensburg, Germany, and is a Marine veteran who currently works in outdoor lighting. They have been writing for the last several years. Among their favorite authors are Heidegger, St. Bernard, and Ezra Pound. They reside in the state of Texas with their wife, Rachel.