“That night, after she’d screamed into her crumpled blanket for a long time and finally punched a hole through the darkness into that other place where the answers came from, the darkness began to speak to her, its voice more distinct than she had ever heard it before. The darkness touched her. Its touch was hard and warm, but somehow comforting, as if strong, invisible hands caressed her.”
[Excerpt: Schweitzer, Darrell: Sometimes you have to shout about it]
We dead leave no footprints in the snow,
and when we summon you to the door,
you say it’s the wind, or rustling ivy,
or a dry branch scraping a window pane.
We wait voiceless in the dark,
in our hunger and our rage,
for you to wander out that door,
or lean out the window into the night.
For we are your ineradicable past
and your inescapable future.
[Darrell Schweitzer]
„Jack Sprat would eat no fat.
His wife would eat no lean.
Mrs. Sprat died in her late thirties
of a combination of diabetes,
high blood pressure, and heart failure.
Her husband outlived her by almost four decades.
He never remarried.“
{Cautionary Tale by Darrell Schweitzer}
I miss the night sky.
In the city,
you can’t see much:
only the moon
and the very brightest stars;
the glorious Milky Way remains
unsuspected, unimagined
by most who live out their lives
within the city’s glare.
I miss the night sky.
In the grave,
the stars of the deathlands,
are few and faint and strange,
the last fading embers
of fires already extinguished,
and we who rise up out of the grave
are too preoccupied with our pain
to pause and look at the night sky.
[Darrell Schweitzer]