I in a steel shell
Thinking on darkness
Passed in the sunlight
A boneyard.
The sharp shadowed shapes
Of cold weeping marble
Grew foul from the green grass
Above rotted roots.
A had then a vision
Of layers of bodies
On layers of bodies
On layers of bodies.
The dead they were looking
From blank eyeless sockets.
The dead they were talking
From dry lipless mouths.
Thousands on thousands
And thousands on thousands
Pale in the darkness
Dry and cold in the darkness
Above there was sunlight,
Clouds, breezes, and birdsong,
Below there was darkness,
Dark whispering silence.
And I in my steel shell
And they in their earth beds
Were kindred in darkness
Were destined to darkness.
Fleshless embraces
Below waving grasses
Beckon me ever now
Into the boneyard.
Summer 1993
Copyright 1997 by Jennifer Kohl. All rights reserved.
