Of Absence, Darkness, Death: Things Which Are Not, Ray Bradbury

Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not
Each unshaped shape resembles
Some midnight soul
That “with Nothing trembles.”

Blind skies, cloudless dimensions;
Do smother souls
Whose nameless apprehensions
Go unborn; all’s diminution;
No spirit-fire flares, no apparition
Leans forth its faceless face from looking-glass
Or windowpane.

The rain wears only wind, while wind wears rain,
And when the wind with winter-white bestows
A-spectral ice, there no ghost goes.
All attics empty, all breezeways, bare,
No phantom, prideless, restless, drifts his dustprints
there. The autumn round all dreamless goes; no seamless shrouds,
No palaces of callous stars, no marble clouds,
The earthen basements drink no blood
All is a vacuumed neighborhood,
Not even dark keeps dark or death hides death,
And sightless pulse of panics keep their breath.
Nor does a ghostless curtain pale the air
All absence is, beyond the everywhere.

Then why this unplumbed drowning-pool of fear?
My soul dissembles
Like unit candles blown down-wind where nothing
trembles With bloodless, lifeless snowchild’s seed Miscarried by nobody’s blood and need, No moans, no cries
No blizzard mourns of silent celebration Whose tongueless population Stays unborn-dead. But in my mindless marrow-bed: Fears unremembered How then forgot? Yet: Absence, darkness, death: things which are not.

The end