I have lost the gift of tongues,
or perhaps I never knew how to speak at all.
In dreams, I have seen the tower crumbling
and felt my throat closed against my fellow humans,
my voice crumbling, too,
never to be heard again.
The van Helsing Legacy: We Shall Not Sleep - 6 by QuiEstInLiteris, literature
Literature
The van Helsing Legacy: We Shall Not Sleep - 6
December, 1919
The house was in a furore. We could hear it from several houses away, and Mr Apostol’s steps faltered.
‘That can’t be good,’ he commented.
I stopped to listen.
The main voice I heard was Clare’s, though I could not make out the words. Many women combined pitch with volume when trying to make themselves heard, and their voices became shrill. Clare’s did not. What she neglected in pitch, she made up in even still greater volume, and her tirade broke over us from a hundred-yard distance in the inexorable bass rumble of an approaching train. That was not the sound of her grief. The woman was
Death holds no sting for the dead;
the blind do not fear the dark,
nor does silence weigh heavy on the deaf.
My pain is a fragile thing,
flimsy and foundless.
I have been told to be not anxious
about any little thing ---
the Lord is my shield.
But, God, I feel death near,
and sometimes I am alone
in the dark
and the silence,
and I fear.
---
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As red the blood that washes clean my sins,
and white the water flowing through my hands,
so let each word I scriven crimson be,
each word I utter gleam like fallen snow.
Oh, Lord, take up my pen and grasp my tongue,
and let no speech or scrawl of mine spread hate,
but closer draw humanity to love.
Shall white and scarlet in my soul entwine,
my purity and passion mimic Thine.
---
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Fifty-nine beads, wood and glass.
The words pass
over and under one another,
weaving a familiar song.
And I remember all the years
held safe between one Mother
and the other.
Flesh and spirit wove a song
of fifty-nine beads.
---
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Come, Spirit.
Breathe, Spirit.
Inspire.
The universe is seldom kind,
stealing as often as it gives.
Life ebbs and flows like the tide,
and sometimes, I feel like the shore,
worn away inch by inch,
year by year.
But the Spirit moves like wind,
directing the waves, and there must be a purpose.
Looking back, a pattern emerges,
each event pouring into the next,
and I discover,
that every joy has a distant root in pain.
I am a lustrous pearl, growing bright
from my wounds.
Come, Spirit.
Breathe, Spirit.
Inspire.
---
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Send me forward, Lord, with open eyes;
blind faith shuffles, stumbles, falls.
Let me see You in the earth, the sea, the sky,
the faces all around me, every beating heart.
Let me learn You from the brushstrokes
Your creation left behind.
Let me seek you in the atoms and the waves,
the fingerprints in the cosmic clay,
the things that change and the immutable.
Let me seek and search and someday find.
If I can see, then I will run, shuffling no more.
I will believe like a child,
whose favorite word is 'Why?'
---
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I am to love my neighbour as myself,
to offer my humanity and help.
So says the Lord my God, who shaped my soul.
Yet, 'Hate your body!' cries the frenzied world,
and bids me look with horror on the face
my Father sculpted with His loving hands.
What love can neighbours hope for in a place
where love of self has faithlessly been banned?
The world may do its worst, may rage and rail;
I'll love myself and thee till strength should fail.
---
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Today is ashes - all men die;
to dust we will return.
Our time here passes swiftly by,
and there is much to learn.
So in these solemn days take part -
be silent in yourself.
In stretching hands to other hearts,
we find our truest wealth.
---
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