With what does yonder reach to seek our suffering? And what in hell doth rot?
To those gallows we went, deluged thus in thought.
And then we follow fallow fellows in degree, tiptoeing and ill-going into night upon the breeze.
The flames were a welcome sight. In the night, we’re warm at last!
Here we stand, upon the precipice, fire at our feet. Flames flickering, and fear runs deep.
Here we stand, the hallowed trash! The tortured, trembling wights. Those hands, here quaking, harken tremors by the light.
Then we look to that dark place, tomorrow at its end, and see a broken lighthouse, a mirror of us instead —shining — as a beacon.
The light of dawn upon us, the terrors we shall reap — a shadow — wind-blown horrors from it weep.
Wicked winds of winter come to hearth and home. All the slings and arrows, hollow as their bones.
Windows drawn, the will begone, the tender longing past.
…
Taught to children ergo, forgo, beyond the winter’s daze — what light alight their faces, scrunched up in the haze — for we have been recalled.
This small thing, this invocation, terrible though wrought, in it sought a beacon of tomorrow never brought.