Scorpions & Drought

There I stand, in a wood of trees pale as if bones

eroded by nefarious winds,

haunted by their barking echoes.

Were doubts to arise that God retreats slowly from this world

which until now renewed itself with every dawn

nurtured by holy breath:

behold those mountains

the rocks of which turn to ghosts

and those roots petrified in thirst,

vainly defying the opaque silence of hollow rivers,

and bury your doubts in a profane grave.

The greatest proof of justice and mercy

God's supreme goodness

and his loving caress

inhabit these abrasive pillars of dust,

the black veil at the horizon

soon to hush in velvet silence

your daughter's last breath,

crowning you the depositary

of ten thousand indignities:

the eminent king of a world in dismay.

Every singularity is filed down

by this continuous ochre stream.

The only memory and existence

those you cherished ever had

and ever could have,

the memory of the heart,

is overcome by the drought of the heart:

a desert with no life but scorpions

coming as a swarm, as a flood

with an abundance of deadly stings...

one for every remembrance

one for every comforting echo of the past

for blithe days of hope turned sour.