TELERTHEBA

truss-work · a vault of ribs struts and pillars
pushing till the volcano breached the broad trench
lava congealing before the plain of amadror

we had crossed it and stopped at sunset to pitch
our tents in the ramparts before the rocky dome
and spoon canned food and have our schnapps

almost journey’s end yet each of us withdrawn
insulated by everything without · a few steps
from the fire and light like gypsum was all there was

a depth of surfaces devoid of all proportion
ridges of dunes immovable long a world frozen
in its quaternary and distorted by this timelessness

incorporeal · with the moon at such a height
the sole source of shadow was ourselves · we had passed
into something effortlessly still and inhumanly

blind each of us moving singly towards the night
whose monolith was only shattered space and less
comparable now as it loomed becoming barren vast

and matter · a sufficing in nameless indeterminacy
that grew in us · relieved of all foreignness
we were little more than contours in this absency

TELERTHEBA