In times now gone, gone, gone, there was another Place.
A hall. An alabaster snake that coiled round and round
And bound you tighter till blood left through your throat.
It was white as sin. It never ended. A forest with all trees
Ripped out and snow alone. That was the hall. It must
have ended somewhere a time long ago but now it ran
Free. To suffocate the planet. We were there. That hall
Is gone now but I will speak of it. Against all advice.
As we walked through that place we heard our hearts beat.
Everything seemed to echo. We weren’t sure why. It felt more
Like a response. And yet we walked on and as we did we
Tried to forget it all and spoke of home and coffee and
The city and how it all changed fast and now we were here.
Amongst pure walls. Pure as satin or marbled skin.
We tried not to think then but you have a chance. Think.
Nothing but you and that place. It swallowed everything.
Walk now. Continue. We went further into the depths
Until we shattered as glass in shards on the floor.
The halls were dim now. Dimmer than the eye can see,
So grey that the walls seemed grey and the horizon blurred.
You could touch that line if you stared long enough to and if
You killed your eyes you’d see it too. What laid beyond the
Horizon. Forbidden West. That is what you’d see. Put
Your thoughts in my hands and you will feel my fingers.
We slept in what we called night. We thought it would be
Better to die in our sleep than live and face what dimmed
These lights and yet we knew we must wake and walk.
Until we ground our legs to dust in these white halls
And then our dust would be swept by what? What which lies there.
That answer. It never stayed. And then I woke one night.
Black as death. My limbs were all frozen and now,
Now I write in mourning the fact that changeless place
had changed. The halls were dark. We became I. Alone.
I was alone and alone I became the halls and I felt that
Pit grow large until I burst into a whisper in the air.
These now black halls lived. I stood up and saw,
just then. Right there! Beyond the horizon of what
Was all shadow a red light like a struck match glowed.
I tell you this in confidence to tell yourself alone. I ran.
I called it the sun then and even now that thing that lived
at the top of these mountained halls had its gravity.
A hum filled the air. As the sunset grew closer I heard it
Speak. In a language long gone. Pure noise; deafening. It
Grew louder the more I ran until I forgot I was running at all
And there, in halls first white then black now red I listened.
I thought I could listen hard enough and understand.
What those who I could not see were saying. I could not.
Just then I saw them again. The rest of us. Up ahead.
The two I saw waved — at what? They waved and cast great
Shadows as I came towards them and saw their skin trail on
The ground in front of me. Drowned men amongst the noise
Of a sun that shone red hot. The sun boiled the air and we
Felt what it must have felt like to be here in that time gone
Where there was something here, something that lived in
This dead place that held only four. Us three and our sun.
I saw it. Right there. Beyond the horizon. Look further,
Further! Try your hardest to see what I saw and you will see
Men not waving at nothing but — what did they wave at?
Beyond what I could see on the other side of our sun were
The two men. Again. Identical. A mirror that stood still. Stared.
I stopped on the charred hall floor and felt my skin blister.
Amongst the blaring heat and the burning sound of the sun.
As though grasped by a hand that gripped my skull I stared.
Up into our sun. I saw crackling red lightning, currents
Of inferno and bounding light that at once lit my eyes
Aflame. I felt a force that kept me there. Only there. As
Though if I were to avert my gaze my neck would snap and
My eyes would leave their cage and I would be a puppet
Without it’s strings and fall, lifeless on lifeless ground.
At first the sun bore a pinhole in my vision. It grew larger.
I tell this next in truth. Not one moment in my life has
come close to this moment in truth and in beauty.
As the pinhole grew to a black disk that then eclipsed
That sun there was a glimmer of green as of the grass
In a field that I had been before. Ir memory or fiction.
Not a day goes by where this thought leaves me.
That green light that pulsed once as a single heartbeat
Of the world that I saw, alone, as the first in all humanity.
In that hall. Next was another memory branded in me.
I stared back down. I saw nothing first but as my sight
Came I saw only one other man beyond the sun’s light.
I saw his skin first: Broken, bruised, yellowed, diseased.
It was all shades as a ripped canvas. It seemed as though
It was hard for him to breathe, to stand, to exist at all.
I saw this all first and then I saw again, closer, closer I
Saw what must be his face but I could not focus my eyes,
I could not focus my vision, and I stared longer into the blur
until just then in these white halls now of crimson I saw
what must have been his face and there, right there.
It was my own. I turned and ran again.I felt every memory
Shatter as though they could not be. I was always here.
Prisoner. Shackled in these endless alabaster halls.
As I ran I slipped and cracked open my head and saw
The blood rush out of that open wound. It shimmered
In the sunlight and as my head lay on the ground it turned
The floor of the hall into a river filled with blood against
That red sunset and the hall was no more. I tried to rest.
And then I felt hands lift me and realised that the story I
Write was not yet over. My sentence had not been served.