The heavens cried, the teardrops fell
And spattered on the streets of hell.
A smoky haze entombed the town,
Devoured souls without a sound.
Each ghostly form, devoid of life
Cut here and there – a piercing knife
Now thrust into a weeping form
As sorrow haunts him, black and warm;
And never-spoken fears arrest the soul.
Undying pain with all its death
Beleaguers him with every breath
Of hopeless air; more hopeless still
The children by the windowsill
Who spend their days in ashen heaps
‘Till evening comes and body sleeps.
And death without but punctuates
The shadows moving through the gates
In silent ranks, attending to this end:
“Defeat! Despair!” the mourners wail
And fling their cries into the gale.
(The tempest on the sea of death
Spoke terribly with every breath)
The breath – that breath that from them pours,
Like foul stench from Hades’ shores,
Defiled every decent thing
And made the raven pause to sing
Of death and of mortality’s decay.
The shadow gone, the rage subsides;
But deep within the soul abides
That nameless fear of death and hell-
That fear for which the teardrops fell.
Immortal though this coil seems,
The truth is more than shapeless dreams
And will reveal eternal worth
As this Transition moves us forth
Into the life beyond this life we know.
