After sunset, the burden gathers weight,
as crows descend through corridors of twilight.
Claw or hand pries open the Moon’s gate—
for you, my friend, I’ve turned to ghostlight.
I fell in silence from the phosphor-lit sky;
when you leaned closer, nothing did I say:
“Do you still keep a dream of me on high…?
Is there a breath that has not slipped away?”
And on the third night, if candles scorch my sight,
is it the rising or the road of lament?
For I am but a tool, a broken mirror of light,
serving — ut omnes per illum crederent.
If I must fall, then let it be with grace,
to sign my name within the Book of the Dead.
I sought for God in every glass’s trace,
to sip the silence, taste the hush it shed.
In living tears, beneath my fleeting breath,
my scattered hopes lie broken, crushed and small.
Silence descends; my body leans to death,
a vast sign rises on the midnight wall.
No zodiac shines there; half-dead we remain,
and even at matins we watch no more.
Our souls burn down, then gutter and wane,
blessed into silence with each glass I pour.
And those whom fate has summoned to depart
present to me the last waltz of the ball.
Spirits keep turning with moonlight in their heart:
so life grows colder — each generation’s fall.
The gleam of my signet-ring flickers, then fades;
the warders within me sink into rest.
The last of the line, among funereal shades—
“et lux in tenebris,” so often confessed.
They say that a star lights the brow of our dust,
the flash of our consciousness shall never cease;
yet all that is falls, and all that was, dust—
bodies fall earthward, their throats given no release.
One final dance I ask, within this stillness,
one final glass of wine I’ll share with you.
So, when I leave, they may say I was smiling,
my lover was summer, and winter I knew.
And all whom I wronged forgave me in kindness,
with falling leaves my body takes flight —
I turn back again and toast to the heavens,
a farewell blessing beneath the sun’s light.