March of Lost

 K Hassan

Sing, Muse of men,

Bones bear the stain of centuries;

Oath-bound hearts cross dust-choked battlefields.

Time slips like wuthering wind through cracked fingers,

And the earth never drinks deep of water and blood.

Let your immortal voice flow

like silvered, cutting light,

Guiding me through shadowed corridors,

beyond the star upon star

that flickers—then vanishes—into the void,

And weary feet strike against

the shattered bones of worlds.

Through the bronze-lit haze, we march—

Far from the laughter of children,

Far from the olive’s quiet breath,

Our names carried on the caws of restless crows

Each night we gather where spear-shadows pool like ink,
Casting counsel as stones into wells of smoke—
Bitter wells filled with ash and forgotten gods,
Where time unravels and the sky forgets to turn.

Among us, the wise and weathered—
Bearded as ancient oaks, shaped by storm and shadow—
Speak in riddles curling like smoke around pillars broken by rain and silence.

No prophecy comes, only whispers—
Warnings tangled in memory like nets abandoned to the tide,
Hints of carnage yet to come, names swallowed by dust.

We bury the dead beneath moonrise silvering the plains—
Not with hymn nor harp, but with rough hands and hurried silence,
Their eyes unshuttered, staring into the infinite abyss,
Into the indifferent crown of the night sky.

Blood on their brows gleams—rubies in the last dying light,
When laughter rings out—
Neither human nor beast, but older than earth’s own bones,
Loud as bronze struck by thunder, echoing beneath our feet.

“Behold!” it cries, and breath is caught in dread,
Like a storm splitting the sea, awe and terror seize the ranks.

“Holy Mother of God,” whispers one, fingers white on his blade.
“Get ready,” croaks another, voice raw with broken prayers.

Again the word—“Behold”—falls,
Piercing hearts like a spear through hope and flesh.

So men cling to names like shields against the void—
“Holy Mother of God,”
“Are you Catholic?”
“Jesus Christ.”

Earth yawns beneath us, cracked open by our march,
But no chariot wheels flame to life, no steeds of dawn arise—
Only the names of the forgotten, etched in ash and bone
At the broken rim of the world’s endless night.

The veiled sky turns her face, silent as fates weaving the unseen—
Yet oath-bound, bronze-hearted,
We march, we fight, we halt—
Driven by fate’s iron thread,
Haunted by voices rising from dust and dream,
Echoing, fading—
As all men do,
Beneath the responsive sky—
Beneath a throne not made of gold,
But of breath and silence,
Where whispered prayers hang like stars,
And the gaze that watches waits—
Neither wrathful nor kind,
But vast as eternity itself—
Bearing witness to the march of men,
Whose feet ascend beyond earth’s ruin,
Whose hearts beat still beneath the throne of God.

Posted in: