Into the Tomb We Go
With gentle footsteps and cold wind
biting the tips of our tear-stained fingers
under a sky darker than midnight
and our every heartbeat haunted
by the shadow our bodies leave behind
in the cave, in the lanternlight
and with the dread of the existing
beholding the nonexisting and the
awful delight we take in the glittering stone
of the cave wall, shaped like a massive, laughing skull
and with the torches we grip in perspiring hands
above the coffin, polished wood reflecting orange
and the cold, dry, lifeless air
we fill our lungs so cautiously with
into the tomb we go.
That air, so clear, so blue
floating above the sand
—a sand that has never seen rain
a sand fine and motionless
a sand soon to swallow a man’s bones—
that air, we fear
As pure and as undefiled as moondust
still and thick
cold, cruel, merciless!
A peaceful mantle for the dead.
Wading through this air
swimming, breathing it, suffocating on it!
—into the tomb we go.
And there,
in that shallow hollow scratched out in the ground
a box descends
a box with man (or is it a man any longer?)
wrapped in cloth
his eyes closed, his limbs distorted
a body, a vessel of thought,
of pain,
of hot breath
of a lifetime of memory
of hands that felt
of eyes that see
now to fall back
into the ground, into a scratched out hollow
gaping like a soft, earthen mouth
to slip between lips of sand
for those lips to close
for those hands and
eyes and
all that ever was this man
to fade and crumble and melt and dissolve!
To become one with that sand
And that bitter, sterile air—
out of the tomb we go.
And out into that frigid air
wet and rotten
consoling and alive
we walk, we scatter
under clouds and sun and a million birds
quiet or not
laughing or distraught
left and right, up and down
and through the country and the town
forgetting and remembering and then choosing to forget
the gaping mouth and those lips of sand
and that lifeless cave and ghostly air
and that they and I and even her—
into the tomb we go.
