The dying words
still waited to be said.
All time condensed
inside the final breath
Where some may
utter remonstrance or wit
Or grope with
writhing hands the headlong light
For a password
to immortality.
His calm demeanour
indicates this choice,
Which strikes
the bravest breast with rhythmic fear,
Was long since
made, and will not be reneged
To simply prove
the fiction in their fact,
Or to invoke
an impossible faith.
“Who never
saw the death brought by the dawn
Could never comprehend
my dying wish,”
He told his gathered
mourners as they sat
A circle round
the tiny lifeless room;
A smoke-sketched
wreath to place upon his grave.
The lines of
age that layer his weathered face
Divide the memory
from the dream to come,
And while the
room runs hot and time grows short
The sweat that
beads his brow is drowning hope:
A notion no more
foolish than worship.
“If I were
even half the age I am
And suffered
from what knowledge I had gained,
Then all your
god’s own strength would not suffice
To drag me to
his mind-made den of thieves;
I would rather
meet mortality’s scythe.”
A hush descended
closer than the heat,
Their whispered
shock recoiling at his words.
“But you
did come,” he asks, “to see me die?
And would you
go if I were to oblige?”
Through shuttered
lids he senses a movement.
