The fire flickers, casting shadows wide,
Its embers fade, too weak to light the gloom.
The weight of silence presses, none abide,
As night draws close, a shroud, a waiting tomb.
Beyond the cave, the wind in hollow moans,
A whisper lost upon the empty deep.
No peace it brings, but sorrow’s undertones,
A world too starved to even dream or weep.
I clutch my coat, though warmth it scarce provides,
Five souls remain—perhaps one more at dawn.
Yet fever claims what mercy now divides,
And hope, once bright, is all but spent and gone.
No help will come, no hands to staunch the pain,
No gods remain to break this dark domain.
The old man speaks, his voice like dust and stone,
A murmur mourned by time’s relentless tread.
“This fate is old, though men believe unknown,
A cycle spun, where ancient footsteps bled.”
“We rise, we thrive, our cities touch the sky,
We shape the world and name the stars our own.
Yet ever comes the harvest from on high,
To claim the fields that we have overgrown.”
His hollow eyes reflect the burning light,
A wisdom drowned in sorrow’s quiet stream.
No war was waged, no battle met that night,
Just silence vast, and horrors past our dream.
“We build, we shine, and think we make our mark,
But all is swept to ashes in the dark.”
They let us bloom, they let us draw our breath,
They watch as cities surge and rivers flow.
Yet when the world is ripened unto death,
They strike unseen and take what we have known.
Like summer fields that bend beneath the blade,
Like trees in autumn stripped of leaf and limb,
Like hands that reap where careless seeds are laid,
They harvest flesh when life is swollen to the brim.
We blink, we’re gone, erased without a sound,
No war, no fire, no storm upon the sky.
No graves remain, no bodies on the ground—
Just empty streets, where once the lost would cry.
A wound unseen is opened in the air,
And through its gate, we vanish into where?
The girl trembles near, too young for death’s embrace,
Her childhood left in towers of shining light.
She knew the neon hum, the city’s grace;
Now only fire flickers in her sight.
She counts the embers breaking in the dust,
As if their glow could stitch the dark anew.
But all that’s left is ruin, rust on rust,
A world made void, where life is faint and few.
I ask the old man, though I know too well,
“They let us grow, but only for the cull?”
His nod is slow, his eyes a hollow shell,
The truth too vast, the mercy far too small.
His silence speaks a thousand weighted things—
A world once ours now owned by nameless kings.
No battle raged, no cannon split the night,
No banners fell, no armies met in war.
Just silent doors swung wide beyond our sight,
And through their mouths, they took us evermore.
No ships arrived, no voice declared our doom,
No shadow moved across the poisoned sun.
Just gaping voids, where light itself was hewn,
Unmaking all, until the world was none.
The stars went quiet, stolen from their place,
The rivers stilled, the wind forgot to breathe.
As if the earth had vanished into space,
And left behind its corpse for ghosts to grieve.
Yet none remain to wail or sing their name,
Just echoes swallowed whole by silent flame.
The fire cracks, yet none of us can speak,
The wind howls on, but no one draws a breath.
The child looks up, her voice is frail and weak,
“Will they return?”—she means the hands of death.
I do not speak, for what is left to say?
The truth is etched in time, in dust, in bone.
We are but echoes worn by slow decay,
And soon the dark will claim us for its own.
Ten thousand years, then back the cycle turns,
The seed is sown, the harvest comes anew.
The world will rise again where bright it burns,
And they will watch—and take what they are due.
One final breath, one step into the deep,
Then once again—more lulled to endless sleep.
Robert Walker 