The Power of Night

It's useless to look for me here . . . I am so well hidden that
you will pass right through me, only hearing a sigh or two . . .
I have ceased to exist in any but my own dimension, I have awoken from the
sin of completeness and become the distorted prophet of my own non-being...
Now that I have arrived where the words are, I will try to tell you . . .
It was a moment like many others, except that the moorings of my life
were stripped loose by shadows, and the shakey empire of my being dissolved
into slippery puddles . . . at such a moment, one cannot deny the past,
its movement holds us bound and manacled in exquisite decadence . . .
I warn you (sadly): there is nothing alive here.
If the sky is willing, we live out a day in the luxury of illusion
of a certain pale and delicate integrity, with teasing allowed -
but if we once touch the need for death and discover there is nothing
left to say, we can only walk back out into the night . . .
I have learned only that one must approach love and wildness and the void
with equal respect . . . men of stone and silence can do no less.
Excuse me, I am going now to dream of the sea;
I do not want to migrate any longer, but the landscape is without remorse.