Purgatory (English)

tonight I yearn to write
but all the words I possess are printed
I have written them all before
tonight's story is no different
I seek
I strive
I fail
and I have less than I did at the outset

I have made a grave error in my plans
I miscalculated the trajectory of my silver thread
through the cunning forest
the ancient loom
and I am beset by an angry geis

what I could not foresee
what I was too terrified to imagine as a boy
now enters from stage right and stage left

the terror is not disease
it is not mayhem or murder
although those would be terror enough

the terror is in the possible
piecemeal
confirmation of the existence of diety
of the very real possibility that all this means something
and what it means for me is a long punishment

long or short

a punishment

now I must stare down the barrel of a very long rifle
awaiting, awaiting and the sweet sting of death
many tomorrows from now, I suspect
I will not succumb to the lure of suicide
it provides no useful end

in the Existentialist's world it brings only an end
an end to all pleasure
I will embrace the Absurdist's mantle
and go merrily about my stupidity until chance crushes me

in the Religionist's view
suicide brings even more punishment
and an end to pleasure
there is no logic in moving forward that way

In either world I suffer

I will stay and live out my torture
the emptiness some god has meted out to me
or the ludicrous game of chance I encounter in a mindless cosmos

no matter though
the terror I would never have dreamed as boy
comes to stalk the edges of my forest now
and while I hear the dogs' barking loudly still
some day
at last Mallt-y-Nos will come to reap my memories
and I will hear the dogs' barking no more
till then a terrible mare still haunts my days and my nights
not death
not disease
not poverty

what love I have known dies
and what it was I cannot even say
but I would still keep it
sadly, whatever it was, there is always less

my punishment:
to know
that when at last the bullet issues from the bottom of that rifled shaft
it will kill no one at all
save me
and I shall go into that dark night my cousin sang about
alone
in sorrier shape even than he