I who stood on sand and said

      I who stood on sand and said
      The God-word aloud in my shivering pride
      Watch mansion and turret rook beneath the tide
      That roars above my body’s fevers.
5     Instead of dwelling in forever
      I came to the crooking shore of here
      As the last darks broke and dawn recalled
      Heats that create the damned and the dear.
      Now cool and straight as eve’s dark grace,
10    Now lumped as fever’s lesions,
      I stand unmanned, unmade, in the shriving space—
      A shadow man born of shadowed son
      I who was sky and wind before the stars shone
      Before earth filled with grave and tower,
15    Before my star-marked unmaking stand
      Alone and voiceless in unsaying sands.
      Oh never again will I crawl into a star
      Or dawn across ages to a planetary birth.
      I am undone in both seed is and shared are.
20    I have no claim to make but death’s.
      The wry wink that fetched me manifest
      From darks surrounding shore and star
      Is no more an eye at last, at last
      And landward ho the shapeless foams
25    Remake my manless nothingness.

 

From the collection "Nobody Poems"

Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]

More information available on gregglory.com.