I see now
that I was condemned here.
Marked in some way
to the ultimate silence
to face the void
at the lowest of dead things
to join the fossils
at the bottom of the world.
My lamp has gone out
and so I must face
this cave alone.
This cave
which confounds me
which devours me
will leave me
a grave for another
spelunker to see.
I wish I could see.
The cave has me
reaching out, blind
grasping out to feel things
I thought I knew and
I see that I never knew.
I feel the wall I have gripped before
feel its cold ridges, its dust
I have disturbed, and I pull upward.
I must know this cave
inside and out
forward and back
but in the dark it is another beast.
I am a helpless insect
whose hands are antennae
curiously caressing the walls
who must stay vigilant of predators
in the blinding dark.
I travel further up
the cave’s veins
its arteries.
I imagine antibodies
and I forget
that this place is anti-body.
I imagine the cave’s heart
a gray thing that once
pumped gushing water
to open up the veins
and now it’s drowned –
it has completed its purpose.
I cannot help but think
that a rising tide would
lift me from this cave
float me up
to the top and
suffocate me;
my Harrowing.
I don’t know
which is worse for me;
I worry I am too lost
to be found.
To be lost in a cave
by cowardice or courage
is a deliberate perdition,
the monkey-paw madness
of that fig-favoring mind.
That is me. That is we
whose stonecutters christened tombs
whose scientists conceived boreholes
whose ossuaries pollute Paris
disentombing the earth
to see the center of it all
and now
we have found our call.
We are here.
Us, the half-dead
clawing at the walls that
Lazarus traced
seeking a light in
the endless, quiet dark.
We, the silly insects.
There is a path.
We may not remember
but it is there
waiting to be found
by we, by me
by you.
The way out is
where you came in
holding that lively lamp
your wits and
your luminance.