Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
[Greek: Mellonta  sauta’]

These things are in the future.

Sophocles—’Antig.’

‘Una.’

“Born again?”

‘Monos.’

Yes, fairest and best beloved Una, “born again.” These were
the words upon whose mystical meaning I had so long
pondered, rejecting the explanations of the priesthood,
until Death itself resolved for me the secret.

‘Una.’

Death!

‘Monos.’

How strangely, sweet Una, you echo my words! I
observe, too, a vacillation in your step, a joyous
inquietude in your eyes. You are confused and oppressed by
the majestic novelty of the Life Eternal. Yes, it was of
Death I spoke. And here how singularly sounds that word
which of old was wont to bring terror to all hearts,
throwing a mildew upon all pleasures!

‘Una.’

Ah, Death, the spectre which sate at all feasts! How often,
Monos, did we lose ourselves in speculations upon its
nature! How mysteriously did it act as a check to human
bliss, saying unto it, “thus far, and no farther!” That
earnest mutual love, my own Monos, which burned within our
bosoms, how vainly did we flatter ourselves, feeling happy
in its first upspringing that our happiness would strengthen
with its strength! Alas, as it grew, so grew in our hearts
the dread of that evil hour which was hurrying to separate
us forever! Thus in time it became painful to love. Hate
would have been mercy then.

‘Monos’.

Speak not here of these griefs, dear Una—mine, mine
forever now!

‘Una’.

But the memory of past sorrow, is it not present joy? I have
much to say yet of the things which have been. Above all, I
burn to know the incidents of your own passage through the
dark Valley and Shadow.

‘Monos’.

And when did the radiant Una ask anything of her Monos in
vain? I will be minute in relating all, but at what point
shall the weird narrative begin?

‘Una’.

At what point?

‘Monos’.

You have said.

‘Una’.

Monos, I comprehend you. In Death we have both learned the
propensity of man to define the indefinable. I will not say,
then, commence with the moment of life’s cessation—but
commence with that sad, sad instant when, the fever having
abandoned you, you sank into a breathless and motionless
torpor, and I pressed down your pallid eyelids with the
passionate fingers of love.

‘Monos’.

One word first, my Una, in regard to man’s general condition
at this epoch. You will remember that one or two of the wise
among our forefathers—wise in fact, although not in
the world’s esteem—had ventured to doubt the propriety
of the term “improvement,” as applied to the progress of our
civilization. There were periods in each of the five or six
centuries immediately preceding our dissolution when arose
some vigorous intellect, boldly contending for those
principles whose truth appears now, to our disenfranchised
reason, so utterly obvious —principles which should
have taught our race to submit to the guidance of the
natural laws rather than attempt their control. At long
intervals some master-minds appeared, looking upon each
advance in practical science as a retrogradation in the true
utility. Occasionally the poetic intellect—that
intellect which we now feel to have been the most exalted of
all—since those truths which to us were of the most
enduring importance could only be reached by that analogy
which speaks in proof-tones to the imagination alone,
and to the unaided reason bears no weight—occasionally
did this poetic intellect proceed a step farther in the
evolving of the vague idea of the philosophic, and find in
the mystic parable that tells of the tree of knowledge, and
of its forbidden fruit, death-producing, a distinct
intimation that knowledge was not meet for man in the infant
condition of his soul. And these men—the poets—
living and perishing amid the scorn of the
“utilitarians”—of rough pedants, who arrogated to
themselves a title which could have been properly applied
only to the scorned—these men, the poets, pondered
piningly, yet not unwisely, upon the ancient days when our
wants were not more simple than our enjoyments were
keen—days when mirth was a word unknown, so
solemnly deep-toned was happiness—holy, august, and
blissful days, blue rivers ran undammed, between hills
unhewn, into far forest solitudes, primeval, odorous, and
unexplored. Yet these noble exceptions from the general
misrule served but to strengthen it by opposition. Alas! we
had fallen upon the most evil of all our evil days. The
great “movement”—that was the cant term—went on:
a diseased commotion, moral and physical. Art—the
Arts—arose supreme, and once enthroned, cast chains
upon the intellect which had elevated them to power. Man,
because he could not but acknowledge the majesty of Nature,
fell into childish exultation at his acquired and still-
increasing dominion over her elements. Even while he stalked
a God in his own fancy, an infantine imbecility came over
him. As might be supposed from the origin of his disorder,
he grew infected with system, and with abstraction. He
enwrapped himself in generalities. Among other odd ideas,
that of universal equality gained ground; and in the face of
analogy and of God—in despite of the loud warning
voice of the laws of gradation so visibly pervading
all things in Earth and Heaven—wild attempts at an
omniprevalent Democracy were made. Yet this evil sprang
necessarily from the leading evil, Knowledge. Man could not
both know and succumb. Meantime huge smoking cities arose,
innumerable. Green leaves shrank before the hot breath of
furnaces. The fair face of Nature was deformed as with the
ravages of some loathsome disease. And methinks, sweet Una,
even our slumbering sense of the forced and of the far-
fetched might have arrested us here. But now it appears that
we had worked out our own destruction in the ******* of
our taste, or rather in the blind neglect of its
culture in the schools. For, in truth, it was at this crisis
that taste alone—that faculty which, holding a middle
position between the pure intellect and the moral sense,
could never safely have been disregarded—it was now
that taste alone could have led us gently back to Beauty, to
Nature, and to Life. But alas for the pure contemplative
spirit and majestic intuition of Plato! Alas for the [Greek:
mousichae]  which he justly regarded as an all-sufficient
education for the soul! Alas for him and for it!—since
both were most desperately needed, when both were most
entirely forgotten or despised. Pascal, a philosopher whom
we both love, has said, how truly!—”Que tout notre
raisonnement se reduit a ceder au sentiment;” and it is
not impossible that the sentiment of the natural, had time
permitted it, would have regained its old ascendency over
the harsh mathematical reason of the schools. But this thing
was not to be. Prematurely induced by intemperance of
knowledge, the old age of the world drew near. This the mass
of mankind saw not, or, living lustily although unhappily,
affected not to see. But, for myself, the Earth’s records
had taught me to look for widest ruin as the price of
highest civilization. I had imbibed a prescience of our Fate
from comparison of China the simple and enduring, with
Assyria the architect, with Egypt the astrologer, with
Nubia, more crafty than either, the turbulent mother of all
Arts. In the history of these regions I met with a ray from
the Future. The individual artificialities of the three
latter were local diseases of the Earth, and in their
individual overthrows we had seen local remedies applied;
but for the infected world at large I could anticipate no
regeneration save in death. That man, as a race, should not
become extinct, I saw that he must be “born again.”

And now it was, fairest and dearest, that we wrapped our
spirits, daily, in dreams. Now it was that, in twilight, we
discoursed of the days to come, when the Art-scarred surface
of the Earth, having undergone that purification which alone
could efface its rectangular obscenities, should clothe
itself anew in the verdure and the mountain-slopes and the
smiling waters of Paradise, and be rendered at length a fit
dwelling-place for man:—for man the
Death-purged—for man to whose now exalted intellect
there should be poison in knowledge no more—for the
redeemed, regenerated, blissful, and now immortal, but still
for the material, man.

‘Una’.

Well do I remember these conversations, dear Monos; but the
epoch of the fiery overthrow was not so near at hand as we
believed, and as the corruption you indicate did surely
warrant us in believing. Men lived; and died individually.
You yourself sickened, and passed into the grave; and
thither your constant Una speedily followed you. And though
the century which has since elapsed, and whose conclusion
brings up together once more, tortured our slumbering senses
with no impatience of duration, yet my Monos, it was a
century still.

‘Monos’.

Say, rather, a point in the vague infinity. Unquestionably,
it was in the Earth’s dotage that I died. Wearied at heart
with anxieties which had their origin in the general turmoil
and decay, I succumbed to the fierce fever. After some few
days of pain, and many of dreamy delirium replete with
ecstasy, the manifestations of which you mistook for pain,
while I longed but was impotent to undeceive you—after
some days there came upon me, as you have said, a breathless
and motionless torpor; and this was termed Death by
those who stood around me.

Words are vague things. My condition did not deprive me of
sentience. It appeared to me not greatly dissimilar to the
extreme quiescence of him, who, having slumbered long and
profoundly, lying motionless and fully prostrate in a mid-
summer noon, begins to steal slowly back into consciousness,
through the mere sufficiency of his sleep, and without being
awakened by external disturbances.

I breathed no longer. The pulses were still. The heart had
ceased to beat. Volition had not departed, but was
powerless. The senses were unusually active, although
eccentrically so—assuming often each other’s functions
at random. The taste and the smell were inextricably
confounded, and became one sentiment, abnormal and intense.
The rose-water with which your tenderness had moistened my
lips to the last, affected me with sweet fancies of
flowers—fantastic flowers, far more lovely than any of
the old Earth, but whose prototypes we have here blooming
around us. The eye-lids, transparent and bloodless, offered
no complete impediment to vision. As volition was in
abeyance, the ***** could not roll in their sockets—
but all objects within the range of the visual hemisphere
were seen with more or less distinctness; the rays which
fell upon the external retina, or into the corner of the
eye, producing a more vivid effect than those which struck
the front or interior surface. Yet, in the former instance,
this effect was so far anomalous that I appreciated it only
as sound—sound sweet or discordant as the
matters presenting themselves at my side were light or dark
in shade—curved or angular in outline. The hearing, at
the same time, although excited in degree, was not irregular
in action—estimating real sounds with an extravagance
of precision, not less than of sensibility. Touch had
undergone a modification more peculiar. Its impressions were
tardily received, but pertinaciously retained, and resulted
always in the highest physical pleasure. Thus the pressure
of your sweet fingers upon my eyelids, at first only
recognized through vision, at length, long after their
removal, filled my whole being with a sensual delight
immeasurable. I say with a sensual delight. All my
perceptions were purely sensual. The materials furnished the
passive brain by the senses were not in the least degree
wrought into shape by the deceased understanding. Of pain
there was some little; of pleasure there was much; but of
moral pain or pleasure none at all. Thus your wild sobs
floated into my ear with all their mournful cadences, and
were appreciated in their every variation of sad tone; but
they were soft musical sounds and no more; they conveyed to
the extinct reason no intimation of the sorrows which gave
them birth; while large and constant tears which fell upon
my face, telling the bystanders of a heart which broke,
thrilled every fibre of my frame with ecstasy alone. And
this was in truth the Death of which these bystanders
spoke reverently, in low whispers—you, sweet Una,
gaspingly, with loud cries.

They attired me for the coffin—three or four dark
figures which flitted busily to and fro. As these crossed
the direct line of my vision they affected me as forms;
but upon passing to my side their images impressed me
with the idea of shrieks, groans, and, other dismal
expressions of terror, of horror, or of woe. You alone,
habited in a white robe, passed in all directions musically
about.

The day waned; and, as its light faded away, I became
possessed by a vague uneasiness—an anxiety such as the
sleeper feels when sad real sounds fall continuously within
his ear—low distant bell-tones, solemn, at long but
equal intervals, and commingling with melancholy dreams.
Night arrived; and with its shadows a heavy discomfort. It
oppressed my limbs with the oppression of some dull weight,
and was palpable. There was also a moaning sound, not unlike
the distant reverberation of surf, but more continuous,
which, beginning with the first twilight, had grown in
strength with the darkness. Suddenly lights were brought
into the rooms, and this reverberation became forthwith
interrupted into frequent unequal bursts of the same sound,
but less dreary and less distinct. The ponderous oppression
was in a great measure relieved; and, issuing from the flame
of each lamp (for there were many), there flowed unbrokenly
into my ears a strain of melodious monotone. And when now,
dear Una, approaching the bed upon which I lay outstretched,
you sat gently by my side, breathing odor from your sweet
lips, and pressing them upon my brow, there arose
tremulously within my *****, and mingling with the merely
physical sensations which circumstances had called forth, a
something akin to sentiment itself—a feeling that,
half appreciating, half responded to your earnest love and
sorrow; but this feeling took no root in the pulseless
heart, and seemed indeed rather a shadow than a reality, and
faded quickly away, first into extreme quiescence, and then
into a purely sensual pleasure as before.

And now, from the wreck and the chaos of the usual senses,
there appeared to have arisen within me a sixth, all
perfect. In its exercise I found a wild delight—yet a
delight still physical, inasmuch as the understanding had in
it no part. Motion in the animal frame had fully ceased. No
muscle quivered; no nerve thrilled; no artery throbbed. But
there seemed to have sprung up in the brain that of
which no words could convey to the merely human intelligence
even an indistinct conception. Let me term it a mental
pendulous pulsation. It was the moral embodiment of man’s
abstract idea of Time. By the absolute equalization
of this movement—or of such as this—had the
cycles of the firmamental orbs themselves been adjusted. By
its aid I measured the irregularities of the clock upon the
mantel, and of the watches of the attendants. Their tickings
came sonorously to my ears. The slightest deviations from
the true proportion—and these deviations were
omniprevalent—affected me just as violations of
abstract truth were wont on earth to affect the moral sense.
Although no two of the timepieces in the chamber struck the
individual seconds accurately together, yet I had no
difficulty in holding steadily in mind the tones, and the
respective momentary errors of each. And this—this
keen, perfect self-existing sentiment of
duration—this sentiment existing (as man could
not possibly have conceived it to exist) independently of
any succession of events—this idea—this sixth
sense, upspringing from the ashes of the rest, was the first
obvious and certain step of the intemporal soul upon the
threshold of the temporal eternity.

It was midnight; and you still sat by my side. All others
had departed from the chamber of Death. They had deposited
me in the coffin. The lamps burned flickeringly; for this I
knew by the tremulousness of the monotonous strains. But
suddenly these strains diminished in distinctness and in
volume. Finally they ceased. The perfume in my nostrils died
aw
Austin Heath Jul 2014
I can't remember the last time I lived somewhere
that didn't have running water.
I wonder if it's actually happened.
We're moving a maximalist aesthetic
into a minimalist situation.
I just want a glass of water,
a hot shower,
a working toilet.
Ive never been so tired,
and I've never smelled so bad.
My leg are two masses of limp pain,
my hands are stiff, calloused wads of meat.
My right eye is experiencing a
mild swelling, that I'd ******* pray
isn't pink eye, if I believed in god,
which gets harder from here.
Illuminated in the dark of midnight
by computer light,
with only the tickings
of a cheap watch for condolence.
Their voices complain from downstairs.
Then laugh. Then return.
Trinkets chitter around.
Rooms full of garbage.
If you hit it softly enough,
can you still tell you're at the bottom?
Vilakshan Gaur Jan 2017
The rope was sturdy, stout and thick
the room was quiet and still
Outside, it drizzled, and so a crow
flew to his window sill

The crow peered through the grimy glass
and saw him lying still
as if he'd frozen, fixed in time
devoid of strength or will

He saw the crow but turned his face
away, as some folk do
at the sight of faintest hint of life
for life is what they rue

The boy sat up; his face still blank
he seemed so calm and cold
He looked at a picture on his desk;
perhaps a friend of old?

Perhaps he viewed it every morn
but who would seem to care?
Perhaps it gave him strength to live
perhaps she's no more there

And if the crow could comprehend
what his beady eyes perceived
Perhaps he would have shed a tear
at what the boy conceived

For in moments he would take the rope;
the rope that's stout and thick
And tie an end into a noose
as the clock would cease to tick

The rope, suspended high enough,
the boy stood on a chair
He wore the noose around his neck;
like a necklace of despair

In a moment, all that's good will die
as it does each dreadful night
No one would mourn him, but the clouds
will rain the tears of plight

The boy took one last look of shame
one glance of deep regret
At the world he hated with disdain
at the night; so cold and wet

His gaze then fell upon the crow
who watched him all this while
His lifeless face for a moment gleamed
and almost cracked a smile

He kicked the chair away from him
and felt his feet in air
the noose tightened around his neck
that necklace of despair

His body thrashed about in air
and quickly losing breath,
he saw a flash of light erupt:
the messenger of death

The tickings of his heart would cease,
as did the hands of clock
The rope - the serpant - squeezed his throat
and left him stiff as rock

On the sill, the crow let out a cry
I wonder what it meant
I wonder if he sensed the gloom,
or heard the sky's lament

And I wonder what the boy endured
in an age so ripe and fresh,
to wish for death and hate his life
that dwelled encased in flesh

The rain now stopped, the sky will clear
to await the light of day
And the only witness to a lonely departure,
the crow: he flew away
Ellie Stelter Jan 2012
no one could ever understand
why i loved clocks so much
i would hold them to my ears
and listen endlessly to their tickings
i would imagine strange mechanical worlds inside of them
and rub my fingers over their gears and hands,
and if they had eyes i would have seized those too

i only loved them in the daytime, though
their rhythm was too much at night,
it would intrude on my nonsense world
and demand order, which wasn't ever any fun for my dreams
i know others, whose nighttime clocks reminded them
of the horror of the Telltale Heart
which is strange, because i know someone,
someone very dear, and very sick,
whose heart ticks and does not beat
whose hands and eyes and everything
are dying, dying, but her heart
died long ago, so now it ticks,
ticks on and on, ceaselessly, reliant as a clock

i love clocks because they tick
because they beat, and make me think of hearts
that do not fail, even when all else does, or is going to,
and manage to be right at least twice a day
even when they're already broken.
drownitout Jun 2014
Government housing,
shoelace subway station loans leave me barefoot across the hardest asphalt amazon.

Waterfall language blended with high volume.
It's like a bathrobed foreigner near luggage pick-up shouting:
"It's too late to catch the end of the world train".

The clocks fixed to bomb tickings
that run the routine,
Sure to schedule human collateral in between the minutes left trickling behind when breaking speed limits;
2 alternate realities late.
(Half past Valhalla, a block down from Revelations.)

Fortune's told at palm reading's for my corpse that's in the wrong casket,
Cast by astrological accident to substitute in place of a forgotten friendships funeral arranged by bothered bitter *******.

Attack, Attack.
Button-mashing masked mad-hatters.
That was only the beginning to the wrong and the bad,
Fresh records in the back of arrests from a past not silent enough yet.

Bored to death at ceremonies,
Only half-dead.
Necrophiliac moonlight vengeance.
Grave robbing ****** robin hood lost his head,
to bones with needs defined undead,
Chatter-box bones with no speech, not even a sentence.

Running out of flesh,
Where's the after-party at?
Lady lust's licorice and liquor.
Swim, saliva swim quick away from a swollen tongue slobbering atop questionable discrediting concrete bedding.

Cannibalistic women,
A cobblestone late as far as bedrock goes.
Stone age-there's already a hole in my chest, deviant harlots as friendly as each fiendish enemy.

The last thing I'm worried about is sinning,
Bare mental calendars, the time machine is dead again, so the phone's out.
Leave a voicemail for revolutionary surgeons slurping down some drowning organs,
small-talk with full mouths waging bets,
Scrap fed dogs, play fetch.

I'm in love with cemeteries,
So where can I get out of this herse called a cab?
Drop me off the next rooftop,
Native tourist under the influence but above sea level smashed.

New Yorker demography photography;
Beer goggles project a building beautifully swallowed by orange and American debt.
Dollar store flip flops found on the 3rd aisle next to molded bread.
24 stories up I slip off,
Dizzy from endorphins; Such bad luck.
Gravity woke me up on the wrong side of the bed.

Wrapped and trapped in grade-school canvas.
The drawer cargo: one fragile motel bible...missing pages.
My rolling papers shooting blanks.
Bankrupt, blanking out on tasteless wallpaper shades of a sadder sage.
Cranium parking lot reservations, space ranging from heart attacks to a redness on my iris blacked.

Do fractures need artsy autographed casts?
On the inside harder scars represent bite marks wolves left with their teeth after their dinner had been blessed.

I can get some 3-quarters of American rest,
Shake hands with death, and consider snatching a scythe to slaughter house guests.
Lethargic, body separate and apart, ornamental limbs decorate and compliment the  curb's new color coat;
A fresh, wet, white and red.
S.R Devaste May 2010
I think you're dead.
You haven't replied to my letters, my calls, my emails, my texts,
my body language, my thoughts, my wishes,
the almost-silent tickings of my heart as it beats closer and closer to where you are.

I didn't want to write this poem, because I didn't think people would believe me.
I thought I should make it a book, or a story, or a newspaper article.
Man Leaves Woman With No Reason, Probably Dead.

We met on park benches, and  under bridges.
In abandoned train stations and  church gardens named after poets.  
We never went out to dinner, or back to each others apartments.
We were too much that combination of whimsy, fear and patience.

I don't know where you live, or who your friends are.
We are ghosts meeting together always passing through each other
never touching.  

I always knew you would leave.
I didn't know how, but I thought I would.
I imagined fights, or the slow dying,
our affection like the tired kidneys of a person
who could no longer filter all the conflicting elements out of
themselves.
I imagined reason.

You only gave me mystery.

Before you left, you said you had to go do something.
You left before I could ask what. You ran away.
The sound of your feet against the pavement like one-handed clapping,
like a tree falling in the woods with nobody to hear it.

Without your return you made me into nobody,
and turned us into a fantasy,
into a poem.
That no one will believe.
A Mar 2014
Phantom tickings of hours laid awake staring at white blank wall ,
You see u am not here,
I have been gone for what seems like forever
I don't know who Iam anymore
You have injected into me flowing through my veins like lead
I am weighed down 
Heavy heart 
clinging on to old memories like a child holding a mothers hand in a bussling city sidewalk 
I knew I'd loose myself without your guidance
Weighed down in bed 
I've realized how big my bed is how much youve consumed every inch of me
Raw and scratched 
inside out you've severed my vocal cords 
I can't even objectify to your injustice 
Youve crawled out 
And for some ******* reason I still sleep with your sweaters hoping that they'll start to smell like you
I smoke your brand of cigarettes hoping that you'll call before I OD 
I love you to the point where I hate you
L Aug 2013
?
beauty is the mind,
the subtle tickings
and whirrs,
that make up thoughts.
Time fades away
The wind blows the sand
Into forever
As the clock turns it’s hand
I stand alone in the silence
The tickings gone dim
It’s my quest for survival
And my chances are slim
I’ll take the odds
If it’s all the same
And live for each moment
While the moments remain

— The End —