Enter by the Narrow Gates

"All Hope Abandon Ye Who Enter Here."

-Dante, The Inferno

Bring forth the Light,

To raze colonies

In a single cleansing breath.

Don't sleep, my queen;

The sun rises one less time

Than it will set.

Now overhead, the stars

That guided our forebears

Have turned to dust.

And underfoot, the churning

Framework of this earth

Succumbs to rust.

Bring forth the Light.

These dreams of Thunder displace,

Dismantled spirit's burnt bare-

Sylphs in the shards resounding,

"Open to the Field!"

Depatterned, floating in Grace,

Mapping the fragments...

"For to awaken and reassemble,

Enter by the narrow gates."

All has been inscribed

In the footnotes of time,

From the rising dead

To the falling rains;

From these proving grounds

To the burial mounds

Of fallen satellites'

Skeletal remains.

From a timeworn note's

Subtle feeling-tone,

To the coiled scales

In this mistaken mode.

Felt the birch bark walls

Of the temple shake,

When those who from heaven,

To this earth came.

From Eleusia

To the Killing Fields;

From the Promised Land

To the coming plague;

From the trenches of

Every whispered war,

To the future wreckage

Of the Large Array.

For the gate is wide,

And the way is broad,

That delivered me

(Insufferable in-between)

From the fleeting dawn

To this endless night,

In the labyrinth

Of the Iron Kings.

Now my footsteps take precedence as the traffic sounds fade,

And this city's lungs have purged their last breath.

I'm held captive at the curb before the World's End Lane,