A Thing Grisly and Gray

There is in the stars a thing grisly and gray,

A creature, an empty-born beast.

So far from the heat of a shimmering ray,

The shivers of flesh never cease.

So far from a star this thing knows not the day,

And the nightmares have never known peace.

But inside this coldness, this vacuous room,

The loneliest beast will now cope;

And in grip of sadness, this dead mother's womb,

The cheeks of the beast dry in hope;

And though stern rejection and solitude loom,

His vision sends peacefully broad;

For inside this dark and this frigid deep tomb,

The empty-born beast has found God.

[1993]