simonhlilly

SCOURED

How many, how few,
Shall squeeze through
The narrow needle’s eye
Between now and this uncertain future?

How many make it
Their own brief continuance,
Whether prize or damnation?
And what shall remain of us,
Our ways, words and love?

Seven times, (some say),
The world has broken,
The path between memory and forgetting
Scattered and almost lost.

The black barbed blackthorn,
Hard and dead of cold,
Braving buds, a blaze of onwards,
In thin sun and ice rain.

How may we, and from whom
Beg forgiveness, offer repair?
We, who will be nameless
With bodies lost and hollow.
Where shall they stand,
Those remnant few
Gazing motionless
At the silent orbiting decay
Of dying satillites?

The scouring voice
Of ravens flying east,
A wan moon amid
Unitelligible constellations.