Cold and Empty Rooms
I walked through cold and empty rooms.
The dust was in the air, and sunlight chill
at times would pierce with ray the stuffy gloom
and slide across the floor to touch the wall,
as all the little flecks like drunkards wheeled,
like dancing debutantes at silent ball.
My footsteps echoed, muffled, in the calm;
I walked through cold and empty rooms.
I felt like ancient monk in fast and alm
preparing prayer in the vesper gloam
each breath writ in the air like chanted neume
that rises from the pilgrim seeking home.
Through endless rooms I wandered, dreading doom,
as cold took up my breath like sudden smoke.
I walked through cold and empty rooms,
through endless doors, as though some heavy yoke
were on my shoulders, as though disaster loomed.
To give my heart some strength I softly spoke.
"See how these quiet rooms, this endless maze,
with boundless silence waits in tranquil sloom
and does not count the years, or months, or days,
as if I could for lifetimes through it roam."
I walked through cold and empty rooms;
they did not hear, nor care for what I'd say.
As cemetery sounds seem fraught with sense,
as heavy seems the air once stained with crime,
I felt a weight invisible, immense:
The footfall soft seemed like some drum of doom,
the ruthless, steady metronome of time:
I walked through cold and empty rooms.
