Heirophany Poem by Aaron Graham

Hierophany


Non c'è felicità in questo mondo
C'è solo disonore e la morte



Here, the end of the natural world—
Here, auroras' scarlet ringlet signatures-
Ionized particles trace our circumference
Suggest a diadem.
Suspended axis mundi

Here, men connect with gods
Infinity touches you.
Everything has changed—
Now the train is gone.
Were you at school?

Our train is gone now-

And my brother writes beautiful poetry.
Our train is gone—
But since his fire burnt out
The train is gone—
And Mary has torn her red dress
The train—Our train—
Ember months blaze all the same
Our Train is gone now—

But they sold us tickets to watch sailors tell sea stories.
We bought them cause our village lies at the bottom of a mountain,
Where we still pray before and after meals.
It is an album full of old-fashioned pictures:
Here, she still speaks very indistinctly.
There, you can see ribbons he earned in the war.
Look! See, they glitter when he laughs
Like when he came back,
But he never—
He didn't really come back,

They're all gone now.
This frozen lifeless place
They that held infinity in a gaze—
and blinked.
Cosmogony.
The wind never blows as cold again.

Your train has gone.
Were you at school?