Gone the Tides of Earth

Below furrowed hills, in the creeks of the ruinous town were the pickled corpses of soldiers, citizens; the heads bobbed like rotting fish, stench of those floating dead indescribable. Every one of the faces was upturned and projected over the surface, mouths bloated, purple, ears swollen bulbous, eyes raw, cracked and red, puffed to an acute degree. Those of all sets shone vacant - glossed over in perpetuity - staring up and away into the depressed canopy, at nothing, in the green wood.

The soil of the mounds a mix of colours red, black, brown, therefore ostensibly foreign. Thereof the imported soils that composed the high-risen mounds, the caveated troughs had long ago run dry, with remnants of sticky, red and black liquidities gleaning bright of substances unmentionable. I noticed as much and more, clearly before me, as the blue-veiled crown of an immaculate blood-gold horizon lifted. Slow the dawn sky lit up, revealed the true forms of gothic black trees and pre-autumnal treetops shaded against the furtive firmament, shells of old broken houses, vehicles, shabby lampposts. Certainly, this must have been some scene once upon a time, the road to here - a road of hell, hinter - felt to drag out before me endless, back then seemed so true it had.

Long I travelled. Nowhere had I gotten. Until now.

There were places one could have ventured yet elected to avoid - those places came I passed weeks ago. Since then but silence and day and night and light and dark and light dark, severe, decimated landscapes in all the silent. Thus have I learned thou solitary who goes may not for too long forego beaten paths, lest without sanity called into question. Not in such a place as this. Hence many places strayed from that before rattled in my mind impractical, distasteful, as though somehow complicit in blame - such as if their structures they themselves supplied, constructed - and as if indeed this practice itself was villain and not the jury of confines. Whence I wandered amiss only thence they became desired, when not so that I immediately possessed possibility to heed the tender hearth-call of an utmost, modern Stone Age vacancy.

A loon calls out somewhere down the valley, resonant from in the creeks; lonely, haunting. Startled by it, I throw a rock direction of the noise, exacting retribution, then take a minute for regaining composure. A break of for spirit, mind, and body.

-

After the wilderness, it took several days for the wellness and fullness of my mind to return. There is no such way that the durability of one’s mettle will be called into question more than given absolute isolation. In abolition of all forms external a singular state shall subconsciously reap, create a plague within the internal, disease that thrives upon the eradication of what gives way, from the mind, to produce its own set of things, lost in its shallow, interior world.

Lucky enough, the sights in the town had been the wake-up call needed. Of the hills that stood in their broad fabrications, I alert took pause of delusion to recognize a tangible path. For first time in weeks, fully saw the trace of hands before a pale sky, felt breath filling lungs, staunch beat of heart. Complacent, I stood there rejoined to a general contentment of life, well-being, seeing how they rose with their circular bases etched below, smoothed out at the tops. Unafraid, wandered astray of the battle-broken road, elected pathway to summit of the highest mount.

On walk to the crest, absorbed visceral weakness as the volume of wind increased in cloth many colours. Knew naught other than they were foremost a beautiful, stimulating sight, especially after bland sameness, barrenness of so many days prior. Appreciation could not merely comprehend in thought nor words; a smiley quiver of lips, eyes warmed until they were hot, streaming with tears. Whole while going there felt love for all those I could not see, who no longer went, nor ever would again. As token of esteem, I acquainted myself with the nationalities, birth and familial names of many friends resting there. Such respect always necessary, as is in death neither friend nor foe. Naturally, I took a longer duration to scan the list of compatriots, wondered at familiar surnames, whether relatives of people known, or perhaps persons whose full names I couldn’t quite place.

Down opposite side of the great tumulus, at the bottom of path was a wide, open threshold constructed out of monolithic stones. Air drifted out cold, drafty, entrance blackest as a cavern. From inside deep whispered spectral sound of water, dim echo of stream going away from there. Dared not enter mausoleic site, for what I felt perhaps the dead would not; I knew only adequate patience would restore me fully.

The names and the counts, represented with tallies, one could assume were accounted with, at best, unreliable precision. A supposed full count was detailed on a plaque, upheld by an enormous marble plinth. They dubbed site Place of Five-Thousand Friends and Ten-Thousand Our Own – I learned that nationals had posthumous reservations in the smaller tumuluses and that this largest, where foreign flags fluttered high had been administered for Friends, which included thine own countrymen. Upon learning this, before I turned and walked through the unmarked graves, the thousands of rotten, miniature wooden crosses, I smiled in rejoice, having found anew again renewed course and invigoration, inspired in the depth of spirit of that grand burial memorial.

‘Thank you,’ I said to them, heading away, to all of them.

Walking alas, through rows removed felt less rousing, and I thought of something my grandfather once remarked - that those in death do we abide - and then it was fine afterwards.