The Cave

In a dream,

I wandered

to a maw of stone where my

light danced the rocks and my

feet carried deep into the

lonely dark.

Tunnels twisted in the

granite and I walked them

as a pilgrim

lost until I found the

centre of the veins and arteries

in a chamber where water

dripped from wet walls and

cried in the gravel.

A creature lay

shrivelled in the dark, its

form twisted and

bestial and it stared

into the light with eyes dead

and as white as the achromic

bones that shone through its

translucent skin.

A heart

thumped

in a bloodless chest.

A brain

throbbed

in a nerveless head.

The creature shook in the

cold and let out

a pained moan.

I asked of it:

‘will it always ache?’

It did not

hear.

It did not

speak.

It turned its sightless eyes from the light

and raised itself on wasted limbs to limp

deeper into that

lonely dark.