SISTERS

You were my benison, my binary star, 
when words devoured 
the daylight. In vain I sought refuge
today in spaces your beams
alone could touch. 

I now breathe amid babbling corpses
trudging through gilded graves,
their spirits driving the Lethe,
its dark waters in living veins.

Rage and insight tear at me in turn in
this mire of contradictions.
I remain unyielding, as high priests of
our age collude to rend the sun
and muddy the stars.
They shall not have my soul, I shall not
chant their black litany.

Tangled webs and weary shadows worn
threadbare buttress their temple,
subterfuge and untruths are its plinths. 
A broken world they would secrete in
its labyrinthine darkness.

Your silent white presence, now
triumphant, now reproachful, tethers me
to this life, sisters, your sorrow binds
my cells. Tomorrow's veins shall effuse 
your blood, its eyes cry your tears, 
until Earth is given unto the Light.

© 2015 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: THE BOWER MEADOW

Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Artist: Dante Gabriel Rossetti