Why is the creation

not a story of tears

birth is pain

creation grief

the made is always unmade

the end waits

baleful and patient

 

There are two eternities of darkness...

 

The before

Before conquerors enwombed their seeds

shaped like the tears of women

and un-entombed lay the gray

detritus of the fallen

before ancestors were driven 

from hearth stumbling

falling on cold roads alone

before empires burned language 

onto the tongues of slaves

before iron and bronze 

and the moans on the battlefields 

of the abandoned

a gangrenous sound

ended only by scavenger’s tooth

or simply cold time

 

The after

after children's children's children 

no longer laughed 

at their children’s sweet smiles 

after slaves became masters 

and even their new language 

passed from the memories of mountains

now diminished and gone

after metal ripped from raped lands

became highways that brought news of tragedies 

no-one heard 

except those whose hearts were branded

by the heat of the suffering

 

So this ‘tween light is blinked and short

with all details silhouetted

with all meaning muted 

with all comfort from kin or kingdom covered

by the darkness before power 

by the darkness after glory 

by the darkness forever