30.11.08

would you skin your skull to draw its strength?

Sorry for missing the Dichter des Donnerstags update. It should also be Gedichte des Donnerstags. Which it will be, from now on. Silly me. Anyways, here's the update.

The darkness came, soft as the dew on the fields.
There was no warning, no promise of last supper.
The darkness came, and brought with it murder
Clad in white with harsh words on its lips.

I heard them come for my neighbor, and I hid -
Perhaps they would pass me by, and I listened:
I listened as they slit the wrists of his howling children
And raped his wife as he watched, forced to listen.

The flames rocked like a newborn's cradle
As they ate my neighbor's home, and the bodies.
I watched them flicker so clamly
On the wall, shining through the window shades.

We ran, then, deep through the dark, searching for others,
Pray we would pass free before we were caught.
But the dark was too deep, and we were lost.
Hope left us then, in the gray between mourning and knight.

Last until daybreak, my sister said, and we'll be safe.
But by light, I knew, the world would simply see our terror.
We wandered, and the dawn grew darker and harrowed.
We were surrounded, figures in white.

There was no chance. The world would not know how we died. They would forget how we lived. The pain we felt would be lost and found later by looking at chip marks on bones, once lost then found in these sometimes arid plains. The world would turn over, again and again, revolutions of the child's ball fallen in the water, like our thoughts as we watched them, and they watched us.

And then, finally, with a brisk clip of wind that sent their sleeves out straight

Morning came.
Horus sang.