Paul Georgiou
Secrets of a dark and impious kind
In the silent times of dreaming
when our daytime eyes are blind,
in some crevice of the body,
in some corner of the mind,
we may catch a glimpse of secrets
of a dark and impious kind.
***
Shadows flit across the landscape
into hollows of despair;
something lies in wait for victuals
in the blackness of its lair,
while a yellow mist sits heavy
on the dank and fetid air;
The sun at noon bleeds in the sky,
a dull and leaden red;
the thing that preyed on others
shall not again be fed.
Now nothing moves or breathes or lives;
the land itself is dead.
***
There is an ancient prophecy
that, when the earth was slain,
a wind arose from nowhere
over mountain, valley, plain,
and, through the hope the wind brought, fell
the solace of the rain.
It soothed the acrid soil
and streams began to flow;
in time, it reached the fissures
in the silent world below
and there, by chance, it found a seed;
the seed began to grow.
The mandrake seed, for such it was,
yearned upward through the earth;
it struggled through the mud and rock,
unmindful of its worth
or that the stricken planet was
reliant on its birth.
Too late it reached the surface.
Too late it touched the day.
A savage wind had risen
in an angry sky of grey.
There was a shriek that no-one heard,
The plant was swept away.
***
And that is how the story ends
when every eye is blind;
no crevice in the body and
no corner of the mind:
at last, no more of secrets
of a dark and impious kind.