13. The Life Beyond

HE wakes, who never thought to wake again,

Who held the end was Death. He opens eyes

Slowly, to one long livid oozing plain

Closed down by the strange eyeless heavens.

He lies;

And waits; and once in timeless sick surmise

Through the dead air heaves up an unknown hand,

Like a dry branch. No life is in that land,

Himself not lives, but is a thing that cries;

An unmeaning point upon the mud; a speck

Of moveless horror; an Immortal One

Cleansed of the world, sentient and dead; a fly

Fast-stuck in grey sweat on a corpse’s neck.

I though when love for you died, I should die.

It’s dead. Alone, most strangely, I live on.