It is all done now
but for the mopping up
and we now know our
fates, which we hate, hate...
disdainfully swept aside
like so many crumbs from
my last dinner plate...
It is the last new thing
and it is wrong;
Like stoney hail,
like skies unbound...
The details remain uncertain
and the unsure shape of
the sun, that bright spot in
a new, dark heaven, sears
its way towards us,
so slowly;
I'll shiver before
we all burn.
We... I... know this much,
if nothing else.
It was cold last night
but the moon was bright
and yesterday the sun
was brighter even still,
and colder even still,
hanging there too long...
Unnatural like,
it was not right...
In one place, in one damnable
place, as men
once my brothers, my kin,
died,
carved down one by one
for nothing, the day
too long and lost to nothing,
for nothing but blood and
for sacrifice
For their god, for ours,
who was killed yesterday,
though they know it not, yet.
Eaten and eliminated. Devoured.
Just like us.
Just like us.
Just like me.
The last new thing.
It is begun.
They might call it providence,
but not I. Some sort
of banquet honor but
not... ever... fate.
Not I.
Not today when, soon, I
will only know one thing...
I will tear at that heart I so hate,
if not before, during,
if not during, then even after
I die;
screaming, crying, howling-
Not I, not I.
Not I.
One last bitter toast before
this new, bitter work begins.
I'll sink in my teeth.
Yes, I'll even eat,
for such unnatural deeds,
once begun, will never be done
and this last new thing
will never be complete.
Unlike I, I'll say,
before, during, and after
this remainder of my life.
After the white morning air fades away;
under the final ablution of a blue heaven;
suffering the last kiss from a treacherous sun;
beyond the ultimate silence of the still, still sand;
in my final moment- with the last breath of
the day's final breeze curling around my feet;
Before my final tree,
I'll whisper secret
blasphemies...
I, alone, will remember peace;
I, alone, to keep the old ways,
never wrenched from my heart,
as I was wrenched from my home,
cleaved from my right,
too reduced to fight,
boiled down to nothing
but meaningless toil,
calloused labor in the service
of strange, adopted cousins,
a vengeful shadow of
my once sonorous self,
staining the stones beneath
the crushing, eternal sun;
Only then will I die,
only then and only I.
Only I.
About the Creator
A. F. Litt
Photographer, writer, filmmaker, wandering lost soul...
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