Lachesis

A cold coming we had of it The beacon crept unseen above the ragged coast, Spread its image upon the senseless twilight, and was gone Driven back beyond the flicker of another passage, against a blind sea We hauled our wind to weather the point At the first terror of the silence unredeemed, scudding away on a larboard tack We fled between the fury of the dream fulfilled And the dull retreat of the last sensation The voices of the past we fought, the thoughtless skull of restoration Whispers of a tide, blown cruel and black A dark voyage we made of it Darker than the womb was dark On such a night that deepens as it robs each breath We, the passing, who dash our mark upon this drifting wreckage Led all this way to shuffle at the edge of doom Led all this way for birth and death We prayed for knowledge And the darkness left our eyes too blind to question We sought the silence And the thunder wove its voice into our doubt l

I stumbled when I saw After the pain unravels what the wounds reveal After this path, reduced to darkness, seeks the Word unheard before I trembled when I faced this shore, the face behind this stare After my heart has traced the moment when the moments cease the peace that wretches feel The taste of hope on unsubstantial air Again, I trembled as the night was lost to silence the dark in its disguise

I searched to find the faith these dreams refuse After a life undone by whispers from a shifting mind, as many dreams as I hand dreams to lose As many oaths as I had lies Against these seas, I crossed between the echoes of a fitful sight the fear these winds expose Upon this plea, I shuddered when each year has tossed its course A most poor man, made tame by fortunes blows After all the remnants of an empty night a life too vague to trace its source too faint to stir the path of its demise Condemned to pace unknown between the shadow and the light

I had no way and therefore had no eyes And through this night of skull and spirit, through this stare Between the heart that sheds its last resistance And the mind that wriggles from the jaws of fate Through all the fragments of an end too blinded to begin the will to rise, the senseless calculating The prayer that spreads its faith too thin the cries that murder what the eyes create Through words in blood and darkness, waiting Waiting as the world will wait