A window on the world

I looked from my window and saw the world
in a myriad of star spangled dust
that flew from the mountains, whirled by a gale
across the horizon, darkening the sky
with fine streaks of wisdom, ageing and grey,
fearful of dying yet sickened by life,
screaming contentment but trembling with fear,
bellowing with freedom and shaking the trees
that they might by roots be fettered no more;
clamouring for justice, the life-sap expired
from dry withered twigs that blaze in the flames
of hellfire’s oppression, fanned by the wind
in a turmoil that’s ever increasing
until at last there is nothing left, save I,
gazing through an old empty window frame
and ragged grey mountains, slowly crumbling
beneath the sad discarded scraps of cloud
that aimlessly drift across forgotten skies,
crying occasional tears of bitterness,
who’s useless drops upon forbidden plains,
fall unwanted and in desolation
lie forever, tiny craters of dust,
poisoning at last all remaining life;
and then in rivers gushing through the hills
that once were the home of voices submarine
and green opaques unknown to human mind -
forever dead and lost to all the world.

A dusty diamond and a shooting star
were the only things I saw in heaven,
yet there must surely be than these alone
more a million times a million memories
that are lost, each one, somewhere in my mind,
that I might upon returning not fail
to recognise their brilliant forms be wont
and nothing from anticipation gain;
but fall once more a fool, in hopeless grief,
to cry in vain until I slowly die,
losing everything that’s been mine to love
whenever life has been to me so kind,
which occasions rare I do recall
have been my fortune, usually so ill
my constitution seizes not the chance
to climb a rung and breath a little air,
but rather in festering isolation
waits and hopes for nothing more than silence,
creeping through the darkness with a dagger
for a finger and a flame for a tongue.

A mirror is the window of my room
and wide it cracked when I saw Camelot,
fearing that my eyes would search its byways
stumbling as a blind man over cobbles,
sheltering from the anger of the peasants
in an empty doorway, lest the river
should another victim in its eddies
bewail this night across the ancient plain
and all be lost within a mirror’s frame,
as flies within a spider’s web are caught -
sacrificing life to feed another,
idolising death to eat his brother.

And when I all the World had seen, again
I looked and saw another just the same.