A Tribute To Poe

-A tribute to Poe- “Nevermore”
As I sit in the stillness between thought and the thought of thought,
caught in the echoing chambers where mind beholds itself,
I hear that midnight knocking of a grief once known before
and in the deep, recursive hush of soul turned mirror,
there comes wing-beat, shadow, certainty:
Nevermore.
For what is the raven but the voice we give our doubt?
What horror, what memory, what burden of meaning
does that feathered sentinel of night carry
perched on Pallas’ cold immortal brow?
Wisdom watches, but pity it gives us not.
We suffer our questions beneath its gaze.
Is it cruelty for a bird to speak one word
and strip the world of hope’s illusion?
No?
perhaps the cruelty lies in our demand for answer
where fate has none to give.
What demon torments us so deeply
that our own hearts conjure it in feathered form,
to mock us with the truth we fear to face?
To whisper the boundary of all longing—
the limit of what once was,
and shall not be again.
Nothing,
not for us, not in time’s long downward sweep,
not beyond memory’s dimmed horizon,
And yet,
in the terrible stillness after prophecy’s pronouncement,
when grief hangs like winter on the tongue
we think still.
We breathe still.
We dream against the dark,
Only this, and nothing more…..