The Winterlong

Is mine the hand
That blights the orchard?
Or mine breath born
Of nighted december
The death that blooms
In starless aether?

Shorn from the sublime
Beyond the thrall of hope
Am i bound to infinite solitude
And suffering- not of the body
But of the spirit?

A breeze fraught with tainted omen
Rouses me from the depths of woe
A mutter of marbled limbs
Bestirs the wurm within my breast.

The eastern eye peers with sickly fire
Revealing wretched faces four
Bent and bearing through the grey
Another corpse, this cairn to join.

My visage twisting theirs in fright
They turn in vain towards morning light.

My hand i cannot, will not, stay
The crows shall feast this sordid day.

Musing on these silent streams
In patterns pouring from the deed
As if they would for me portend
Though cowled in forgotten tongue.

Black wings fold o'er tattered throats
I see the answer in their descent
In their rustling, their rending of flesh
To bring this revenance to an end.

Ten thousand deaths on me bestowed
Shall be repaid in likened fold
A chalice filled for thee and thine
This world to drown in draught of white.