My rib cage lies shattered.

Torn apart,

Whole chunks of deadened flesh,

Crimson-sinewed, still attached.

But redundant now, a giant’s feasting,

Discarded.

 

Iron-rodded spine,

Once so firm,

So rigid,

So piercing,

Now exploded, disarmed,

Larmes bataviques – a glass teardrop, snapped into nothingness.

 

And I let my heart be blown by the East wind.

Only the East wind, the darkened, be-shadowed East wind.

 

And the East wind takes me,

Carries me like dust in the air,

Over mountains, where if there was a God, surely He would live,

Across deserts, where no human footsteps belong,

Through forests of silence, of secrets, of longings,

Above cities of ten thousand dreams,

And aloft vast oceans beyond knowing and not knowing.

 

And spent, upended, turned inside out,

I arrive to where I will never leave,

And bring you here.