The Passion And The Prayer Poem by Barry Van Asten

What occupant beats beside a lover's brain?
Who hears the whispers of the past?
It is the old world that comes again
With dreams, softly as a ghost,

Creeping from the thresholds beckoning,
Breezing in and out of age...
As Death's ticking knuckle is hammering
Unseen shapes of fantastic rage.

And through the night the flesh did sing,
Touched by unseen hands in the dark
That showed only the nothingness in everything,
Like a dead candle lit by a spark!

A brief pause in the rail of change
That strays over time as some star,
Where we are but mannequins in the strange
Laws that govern what we are;

Drawn like some architect worm to the cell
Where the suspended pulses of our way,
Rot, inside the timeless shell
That carries our decay.

Through the passing of tiresome years,
The blue-veined curve of sleep's release
Is sickened by the sound of tears
Where the activities of the dead don't cease!

For love has stirred some unseen rite
Amongst the shadows of the lost;
Steered some wanderer from the night
That won't relinquish the world as host,

To flow from out the tomb and grin,
And break a body with deceit,
For science and atomic faith won't win
When the passion and the prayer's complete!

What ague has surfaced from the unknown
To blow like leaves through viewless space
From depths to mingle moan with moan,
Always returning to this place?

Where I mourn a prayer that won't be heard
For a love I cannot have,
That hungers for the passionate word
And all that transpires in the grave.