Blackheart

Behold! There lies that faint outline,

One worn - not by age nor weariness;
One cast down with a broken spine,
One heavy by burden and loneliness.

Some call it heart, some fancy it soul,
Anima some deem it to be; all I scorn:
For wherever the human being can go,
it is resumed only in wilt, rot or thorn.

Hearts rot, souls wilt and things more,
Yet this burden of the being persists -
The doom of flesh, of bone and gore,
This trials of tears, waists and fists!

The outline, faint, grows and darken,
and the being - uprooted, made public again;
And by air a command goes: "Hearken!"
And senses of spirit and sinew restrain...

Yet this heavy, unlifting refrain undies,
And echoes so gloomy and eerie all around,
That whatever false reason dead lies
When the motifs of reality abound.

O heart, o blackheart, we must be bad...
For what other justice holds this cell?
O heart, o ravenheart, we are now sad...
Undone only at the last toll of the bell.