13    Cairn

Poor poor Lucien, they found his body at the bottom of the shaft,

With sombre desperation they brought him to the surface,

Where he could only fail to breathe the clear air of the upper world,

The doctor himself wept as they carried him back,

Lucien watched them with bemusement as they carried his husk away,

And did not notice the quiet calm with which he assayed the weeping relatives and aides,

As the twilight gathered into dusk, the rocky landscape became statuesque monuments,

Who themselves came alive as strange eldritch shapes,

This new family danced and sang with him on the fading staircase to darkness,

When this last stair came to a new realm beyond his stony brethren,

Here a sense returned to him that he knew whilst of flesh,

An overpowering fear of the sheer emptiness of tenebrous encroachment,

“How can the dead feel fear?” His fragmented spirit wondered

As it flew shrieking back down the chasm from whence it came,

Greeting only a deeper shade of black that rushed to meet it,

The once-was Lucien flew until the dark was so all encompassing,

Until the silence so complete, until the acceleration so unimportant,

That a quiescent peace reigned.

The ravaging fear ceased and our shade perceived that owing to its own fine matter,

It had plunged through the ground and into a space that was the earth itself.

With no sense of direction, the soul acted only on the intention of movement,

Endlessly seeking to discern one region from another, yet with no idea of direction to guide them,

Experienced an ethereal tremulous anxiety.

The notion that, with no direction, they might be moving towards the centre or even simply laterally.

Did they move? Were they moving?

14    Basic information – a clone laments

In the region of stair twilight no matter is found at dusk

even shade breathes deeper where the centre owns a husk

We clear a fragmented emptiness as sombre brethren gather to sing

we assay one last landscape which a family of strangers is ravaging

The poor sweep the world dancing in the warm

they move moving movements laterally in the dark

until the stony realms become ethereal and calm

For our shade endlessly crafts wonder in the bottom of shafts

If anxiety knew

why sense flew

away from the new

Another fear brings a body down

(a direction to direct weeping until staring back

becomes a complete case of quiet encroachment)

simply rushing into rocky darkness

as if fear could guide a plunging soul

toward the tremulous notion of earth

Poor Lucifer watching lucid upper grounds

fails to notice this spirit once so alive

and meets this unimportant doctor now seeking

in black chasms all he needs to perceive

Beyond the dead space that eldritch man might fear

sense does not return except through the silence here

and encompassing the desperation of flesh

Lincoln greets the aides who fade until peace is pressed

Back come fine ideas as their acceleration ceases

to reign on new surfaces as lonely shapes and creases

and moving in the direction of tenebrous distraction

sheer quiescence becomes our own intention

No wonder we wonder without wandering

how experienced relatives can be so overpowering

carried everywhere and acting decrepit yet flying and fleeing

from the lithic shrieking of monuments and being