Visions of the Afterlife

 

I.       The Poet Virgil-Less

 

I start awake … a fading bell …

see neon letters brand the night.

Laid out below my windowsill

a broken city bares its blight.

                        The sight

                                    deprives me of delight.

The hollow moon gives forth no holy light.

 

Somnambulant, I dress and pass 

down halls that sound with fleeting sighs.

Beyond a door of shattered glass

strange sights assault my sleepless eyes.

                        The cries

                                    of unseen birds arise

as startled from their nests they seek the skies.

 

I exit to the street, amazed.

The city’s broken like my dreams.

Where all around me lights once blazed

stand empty doorways, splintered beams,

                        pale gleams,

                                    rank fires, reeking steams.

Somewhere in the dark a machine screams.

 

I wander through the world’s remains:

half-ruined houses, rusted cars,

burnt books, smashed stores, cracked windowpanes

lie scattered underneath the stars.

                        Red Mars

                                    winks above the spars

of wooden ships dry-beached as bleached bones are.

 

A file of headless figures carved

onto a block of tumbled rock –

their naked limbs contort, half-starved,

their faceless features blankly mock.

                        No lock

                                    can shield me from the shock

of secrets cryptic as a handless clock.

 

I scan a thousand paths that snake

across the jumbled plain’s expanse.

No signs reveal which road to take,

as lonely travelers like ants

                        advance

                                    into a fading distance

 where peaks loom up shadowy, immense. 

 

I choose a random path, set out.

The wind blows dust back in my eyes.

Unguided, lost, I long to shout

my fears out to unhearing skies

                        where flies

are the only thing that thrives

in a wilderness of lost and broken lives.

 

The road seems endless, each new bend

reveals some future better missed –

some self-made jail cell, frozen end

an eternity of journey whose each twist

                        insists:

                                    Follow me to bliss!

No guiding spirit takes me by the wrist.

 

My footsteps slow, my limbs all freeze,

the mists swirl on without respite

until through bone-limbed trees I see –

                        star-white  
                                   a beam of living light –
           the gleaming city on the high hill.

 

 

John Damon has published many poems and articles as well as a book, Martyrs, Saints and Holy Warriors.   He is professor of medieval literature at the University of Nebraska Kearney.