death

I have gone to the realm where witches and wizards play
I have vexed eternal patterns and
stared godly figures into existence
I have painted the walls with my crimson hand
and shouted my existence from rooftops
where down below the peddlers pay’d not a glance

I have climbed mountains no one else has seen
I have gone beyond the orientation of the compass in my hand
Between north and south
And arrived exactly nowhere
And everywhere

And at the summit of my journeys, I proclaim:
“WHERE ARE YOU, DEATH?
HATH YOU NO HAND HERE
TO GRASP MINE AT THE TOP OF THIS CLIFF?
WHERE ARE YOUR LIPS, SO THAT I MAY TOUCH THEIR COLD ABSTRACTNESS!

AHA! YOU ARE BUT NOT REAL!”

‘Nay, naïve fool!’ Father Death hath replied!
‘I am more real. You have fallen under the spell of Woman. Her flesh, that so near to yours, that you can take in your hands, that too thrives on air, water and the elements…that is but the illusion presented. Your sensual desires have overtaken you! You are weak!’

“What matter you, Death, if you cannot touch me, here, on my hand? Why shall I not take the hand of a mistress, the flesh so real and warm?”

‘I touch your life eternal! No mere proportion of time and space can withhold me. The eternal power you seek lieth with me. The liquid of my essence rusheth forth to fill the cracks of your fractured soul!’

“No! I am at the mercy of no Death!”

‘Then at the mercy of a Woman? Ha! A more pithy and pathetic existence I cannot conceive! Take your choice, wretched mortal!’

“God! Why hath you forsaken me?”

‘My son,’ Father Death replied, ‘or hath ye yet forgotten,
the price or an evening with Maya
is a lifetime on the moon?’