And the children would grin as they danced on the stones
below the soft blue cradling them with a mother's delicacy.
I sat atop all, watching them basking, their smiling faces
recite psalms and glancing to the sky with an innocent passion.
I felt restless upon the clouds,
their tender caresses embracing my soles like thorns.
Eagerly, I searched for a familiar face among the living.
Desperately, I longed to see a lover wandering amidst them.
Regretfully, I could find none.
With this, my heart lodged in my throat, and a cry escaped me,
but the Angels took no notice.
Their grins were crescent moons with no light to illuminate them,
yet the malignity in them could not compare to my loss,
I could hear still his voice tremble with the chords --
could feel the hands who had once mourned me
upon my shoulder.
A sullen admission lingered in mind, and found a way into voice,
And I asked, part to myself, part to a specter,
"Why could I not leave this place?"
I turned, not to my solace
but to the solitary image of another terrible Angel --
who comforted me with no remorse, no fervency or alms,
but rather with a forced question
failing to refrain from the contempt hanging
on her every uttered syllable;
"Have you not your wits about you?
Can not you hear the absurdity protruding from your very lips?
This is Heaven, Child! The infinite salvation!
For what reason would you wish your immediate flight?"
"Heaven!" cried I in desolate countenance,"A Misanthropist's Heaven, indeed!"
Said she, "I suppose you are set to persuade me, then,
that you would rather banish your Heaven for eternal Hell?"
At this I leapt in fury, my eyes filling quickly in menace
and at that very instant such despair I could feel them brimming,
and I replied with a rising agitation;
"I would banish Heaven, could I spend eternity in his Hell,
and I would banish this world forever, to my previous,
were he waiting there!"
For that confession she, that splendid devil, did laugh with venom!
and she! she, that imperiling wretch! had the impertinence to evince
the land that I so craved was no more than a wasteful past,
I should be glad to be gone from those forsaken mountains.
I shuddered at her melancholy, and recited,
"Thy wicked fiend! Harken, tyrant, and do so well!
I have come from the same lands we all have treaded
in far happier days! that same grass we passed through childhood.
I have no regret for the sins I have committed --
Nay! I wish to commence in them again,
not to defy your God, nor to please another, but for the sake of living,
breathing! To feel that blessed air against my skin,
that grass under my feet afresh!
To hold, in my arms, that so called sinner,
whom I loved! loved, with such certainty,
with the same vehemence that I reprobate your Heaven!
I would bid this all farewell, and live the rest of my doomed existence in Hell
would I to be with the one I love through every moment of it....."
