How Long Will I Wait Before I Come Back To the Light
How long can I wait in the blaze of the sun,
Before shadows drag me down from the height?
The stars are a choir, but they do not speak,
And the sea keeps knocking with a blind white fist.
I am held by the flame, yet I ache for the dark,
Where my bones know the cool and the silence is loud.
I have wrestled with angels whose tongues were of fire,
I have drunk from the well where the dusk must still rise.
Do not ask me the hour, for time has no hand,
It unravels like smoke through the teeth of the night.
My voice is a bell, but the clapper is gone,
Still it tolls in the marrow of my mind and my bones.
How long shall I wait with my back to the sun?
Till the earth calls me down with its patient green mouth,
And the worms write my name in their winding script—
Then perhaps I’ll return from the light to the dark,
Or perhaps I will burn into nothing at all.
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