By What Name May I Speak Thee

The Tone

The End.

And then it began.
The Tone,
Near bright, near holy.

To a roar it swelled,
Swallowing
The gaps in everything.

So quickly slipping
Into the Forgotten,
All other sounds.

Near ash, recollect
The thudding, but
No one writes this now.

Yes the town goes on,
Proceeding from its echo logic
Eschatologically sound.

Mute even, if not
For the ever-approaching
Near deafening

Unstruck bell
Crying for us all

The rite then —
So old it remains unborn...
Yet attempted must it be.

Fragile as steel
In this night emerges —
The hope of a whisper.

A whispered hope,
An almost second tone,
Almost a prayer that chances

OBLITERATA

Dancing motionless,
As pit to rope.

The wind is too warm to save us.
The sky, demented cope
While standing in place we race

To erase all known.
So nice of the saints to leave hell open,
To embrace the Unwritten Song

What play is this?
What day dare remain to dawn?
And what say you now with your eyes undone?

I can now only write without fingers,
A ribcaged absence of flowering remains,
Of love asmolder.

[Asmodeus inserts the name]
Riddled with unknowable chimeweres:
Chimaeric lunge.

Were we writing anything else?
Were we writing it alone
Oh, but for the Tone

We might say I have ever done
My part is small I have ever done
My best is all I have ever done

Is not enough...
Got to get
Tough (yo Joe)

Signing off,
Tombstoning on,
Rough Tongue