Nine Circles By Starlight

Cold constellations
Pale, leering and eerie
In their streaming vault of ichor
Green, loathsome, now growing too close to be denied

Wrenched through the canvas
Not the maw of winter
Howling its sharp dismal terror
Tossed, blown like leaves before a cosmic gale

The pass, place of ill omen
Girded in obscure tongues
Gather your ashen cloak
Weaver of mortal thread
We, the oblation upon your slope
In blood beneath the starlight
Nine throats that whisper as one
Arrayed here upon you in caskets of ice

None shall thaw

Some pages once written can never be erased
Some words once spoken can never be unsaid
Some blood once spilled can never be cleaned, never made whole
Some doors once open can never be closed again

Just before dawn Arcturus winks ruddily from above the cemetery on the low hillock
And Coma Berenices shimmers weirdly afar off in the mysterious east
But still the Pole Star leers down from the same place in the black vault
Winking hideously like an insane watching eye which strives to convey some strange message
Yet recalls nothing save that it once had a message to convey
Sometimes, when it is cloudy, I can sleep