If poison be what patience brought,
If power be what love had wrought,
If penitence I’d not forgot,
Would I yet live and lie below the Sun?

The promise of the new was none,
The future’s color’s faded dun,
And where did inspiration run
If I’ve not found it even past the stars?

My ashes sealed in tempered jars
Are bound for long unrest on Mars,
And you without your share of scars—
I’m going with one last unsettled score.

Enlightened by their endless lore,
The gods have paused their petty war
To tell me what my end was for—
To say the laws of Earth are even here.

In passing through the broken sphere
That held the sky and all things dear,
I take along a ghastly fear
That things out in the silence sing in tune.

How difficult to sleep at noon,
And take the balance of the Moon
With weightless dreams that fly so soon—
When only through the darkness they had led.

What daring whispers left unsaid?
With empty breath the angels read
The simple challenge of the dead:
To wake without your moonlit bed
When heaven’s final dance has just begun.