the sixth lapse: virtue

by sun you meant thirst
and worse a sarcophagus
made of molten earth
etched with latin scripture.

something of wishing the body
sweet rest for ages to come
and requite that in the furthest
field the soul find the sun delirious
in the furthest mood-
abandoned though it may be
by spirit and rose and pickled
in thorns!
Damned soul! As dark
as the bowels of a black hole!
As empty as those
words plagued in syllable
and arrival and meaning
meant nothing. All along the sky
line of the ending or the begun

as that soul wrought in storm
cries, "silence! unto sun, unto sun!"

as if bidding the blue mist to marry the night's lonely hills
this lonesome granite mound stares without breath;
this epitaph removes the clamour of the former
soul unto the latter of eternity abandoned
beyond scribbles and visions and condition

and though somewhere the stars too
are beyond the noble decision the universe
must someday make to keep or re-create

at center, rotund and not without weapon
or threat, laughs a spectacle in which an echo
more damning than a whisper stabbing a kiss
into a tainted heart is the endless pursuit
of Disciples of Conscience spying the last
furrowed mount in a plainless trek,
"One last vision to inspect," says anyone
listening. "One last verse to resist," says someone
smiling.

And the soul knowing it could not run,
stepped left, then right, then
unto sun.