The Life Beyond

He wakes, who never thought to wake again,

Who held the end was Death.  He opens

Slowly, to one long livid oozing plain Closed down by the strange eyeless heavens.  He lies;

And waits; and once in timeless sick

Through the dead air heaves up an unknown hand,

Like a dry branch.  No life is in that land,

Himself not lives, but is a thing that cries;

An unmeaning point upon the mud; a speck Of moveless horror; an Immortal

Cleansed of the world, sentient and dead; a fly Fast-stuck in grey sweat on a corpse's neck.

I thought when love for you died,

I should die.

It's dead.  Alone, most strangely,

I live on.