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