Rory Hudson

Waking up at midnight
in a room without a view,
taking up a book, you find
no pages to look through.

You bang upon the bleak grey walls
that bound your tiny room,
but Echo is the only friend
that answers through the gloom.

“How did it ever come to this? ”
you ask yourself in pain -
but cannot even hear your voice
for endless driving rain.

You yourself built this heartless space
from mortar and hard bricks
to guard against a cruel world,
to kick against the pricks.

Now, in this bed you’ve made, you lie
as evermore you must,
until your life shall pass away
and crumble into dust.

Too late you find that this our world
can never be shut out
except by sentencing your soul
to dark eternal drought.