IV (Interment)

I descend
I descend again
I closed my eyes and still these vistas rend
The waning sun… it’s light so thin
Sickly, these pale shafts press
At a gruesome fog, an entangling torpor
Stripping the fenland air of pellucidity
Writhing chains of spiritual desolation reach
And beckons a shattered soul back into darkness
As the soils part in welcome
A riven aperture to embrace a sundered spirit
Closing like a withered fist
Around a frond of pale tissue
Weak — so very weak
Cold — frozen to the marrow
Encased by the frost of loathing
I have nothing left to give
Even my flesh presents naught
A cross-stitched tapestry of past failings
Pallid vessel of spiritual exsanguination
Home to the dread-stare of these listless eyes
Each sordid limb a tendril of pain
A beacon of suffering, a spite of torment
Aflame with gangrenous agony
This hemisphere of decrepitude demands extinction
Extinguish me
Yearning for ending
I beg for the embrace of the fens
A final resting place — marked only by a henge of dead trees
The cathedral stands, omniscient
A memorial to all those who walked within these shadows
Unmoved by the toil of the lost
Who sink without markings into the fathomless murk