IV (Interment) - Fen

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