Alchemisland

Rootless life here hopeless, without a notion

Stasis which reflects my emotional status

Where only dead trees grow

Where snow-coloured bones poke up from stoven tombs

I’m in the place where most won’t go

Swinging my sword and pacing

Trying to erase that which effaces me

I stroll through phalanxes of defaced graves

The dust of mounded decades, the deeds of nobler yesterdays

Signs as highways sport direct visitors around this resort

Of the dead, a necropolis of sorts, for their hearts who’ve aborted

According to local lore, on certain cocksure nights spirits do apport

The tonsured ghosts of monks who lived and died long ago

In their long habits like faultless greatcoats, their grey ghosts

Make procession toward some unseen coast

A host of them observed, choking the narrow channels

At this frightful sight I marvel, careful to be silent

Stooping behind a rood made of marble, variate striations in its armour

Like oil upon a pool, spooked right through, no route through

My mind runs through, I am glad of this proof

That upon life’s removal there is some continuum

All of this planned by a hand above, a land above

Which echoes and recalls below, thrones of gold

Hosts of hosts, the least here is there utmost

In their white cloaks, in their spotless habits

Still in their old habits, as men without marriage

In their ways like set cement, who cannot countenance

Any allowance for another; what’s within is proven;

Glowing with existence contrasted to this spurious without.