They have withered.

The crumbling giants,

With hats hung, hefty pockets, and

Swollen skulls—all teeth and

Smiles—weighing heavy on their

Sagging shoulders.

Pale, blind giants who shudder at

The distant light.

They are the dead, the numbed,

Those tired souls who forgot that

 

We knew her once—in a dream

Now shattered.

In wilted reflections, the passing recollection

Of an ancient cadenza, of a staggering dance.

We, the dying, feel the fragrant pain

And each flower blooming in the night

Stirs a sleeping passion to life,

A longing for the shadows of her light.

 

We watch the giants as we pass

They wade deep and slow in

The emptiness of Lethe and drink

To years forgotten.

We trudge on by the legion with their

Pitted eyes and feet, black clay.

We shudder at poor Yorick’s deathly brigade.

 

I, a nighttime fantasy, seek her out like stories

Of the sun.

“At the bottom of a darkened well,”

I’ve heard it said she dwells. Or perhaps

“At the end of the moonlit path.”

We know her palace is of radiant gold,

We dwell in nocturne eternal.

Yet on we travel

by reflections and distant gasps of light.

We, the dying among the dead,

She, eternal fire. 

 

“I saw her once—on the horizon.”

“She stood with Death.”

“Her shroud the sun.”

But though I search, I have only

Found her fleeting echo in the still river,

The blackened lilies,

The silver mirror in the sky.

Taunting solace, elusive bride,

I tail her. Like a famished hound,

 

The Wild Hunt rides through currents of the sky.

They, the dead, the smiling, bone dry corpses

Call on winds for me to come

And drink with them to oblivion

As they, pale giants of the fall,

Crumble into nothing.

 

Life, again, in the endless night

Or death in blackened waters.

We are lost, and she

Our light

Has left us here to wander.

We—the seekers—

We—night dwellers—

Damned to thirst and damned to dream,

We cannot live without the chase.

We yearn for Truth, our lover.