If only I could take all of you at once
I would take You for ever and ever and only so
Lose myself in You

And comes Urgaritic
In the bedroom we never loved in
And her Yoni
Opens for me instantly
Baal descends
And fertilizes what cannot be

If then I meet you along the way
Where the laurel trees surround us on every side
If then in a small space I stand alone
And turn my head and you smile there
If then I reach out and touch your form
Where all your silences and your chaos meets
Where everything joins and parts
If I may once clutch your heart
And pull its beauty to my face
There the bloodfall falls, red river cracks
Behind me lies black mountain
The wheel round
Great sign of lust
How much I wanted you
And how much more I want you now
The great pain
The great misery
To look and look
To look and look and look
And look and find
Nihil

And concrete covers all
And I clench with what I can muster
Then I open it and the God I loved is dead
Pages metals and signs allgone

The growl the grip and final sigh
We just have time to swallow

And the old and forced familiar land stretched before her, gaping and no longer bleeding, Twilight moved through it like she always has, the emptiness of it had seeped into her bones and replaced the marrow with memory, a fog with a purpose, the basin wider and so much wider than it had been as seen from a distance, and the cliffs of the valley rose high as they always had and they loomed, she could see, the silent sentinels of their surfaces smooth and streaked with erosions where the curves had been carved and put on like a cap. cliffs reached their end, their peaks visible for the first time, stark against the whiteness that dominated the sky. The void loomed above it all, vast and incomprehensible, but she no longer stared at it. Her eyes stayed fixed on the ground, the rocks, the water, the textures of this strange, shifting world.

By the by she walked a river, it was not one of life-giving but it was simply, flowing almost soundless and unnaturally, where the surface shimmered without any color, currents moved without any force to them, tricks of the light at play again, like usual, a tributary a vein, the Euphrates of the Tigris of Babylon, older than all things.

The rivers of Babylon flow
And fall
And carry away
The Tisza

The fog lingered at a respectful distance now and though it still hung in the air, that soft gray mist that refused to fully dissipate away to stay, and it no longer pressed against her, it moved always further away from her at every step which she advanced, retreating, keeping a bubble of clarity, a gift of a warning.

Steady and adapting to the cold was her body, the cold had not eased but felt now like some part of her, the sand that lay beneath her hooves was finger and softer and spilled out between some of the smooth rocks in pools of pale grit. Which clung to her fur, moving easier than she had before against the rocky and jagged surface of wherever away that was.

A constant cold blistered, biting but bearable, a presence rather than an assault on the senses. As the fluids of thought as directionless as the river besides her, sometimes glancing at the too-smooth surface of the water that looked back.

The valley stretched endlessly ahead, a corridor of muted existence, and she moved through it because that was all there was to do. She let the terrain guide her, through the narrowed in places, and the closed and opened places.

The only companion, her breathing filling the space to trickle in along the quiet river flow, a thought of Babylon, built to no longer hold. Nothing of wildlife abundance in stock. A ugging. She shook it off. Sand and cold, always the white void above, watching.

Janus Rises.

The stairway emerged, pulled from a vision, ancient, unmistakably pony made. She froze, her hooves sunk lightly into the sand, and she stared, her breath hitching for the first time in what felt like centuries, an emotional surprise of bewilderment, a shock she hadn't felt even on the day she awoke. It rose from the sand with an elegance so severe, a staircase carved into the cliff face, edges worn by the weight of time, surface blistered and yellowed, scorched by the white above.

Instinctively she moved to it, tethered to the adrift, the shallow steps, knew the divine shape and not the permanence, texture cold to the hoof's touch, rough like petrified wood, smelled of metal and salt. Semitic below.

Above, the staircase went straight through the cliff face, disappearing into a sliver of shadow before emerging again further up. At the top was a structure, silhouetted against the infinite white above. A temple. A mandir. Heiratic. Suspended in the in between of time and function, undeniable of a collage of things, the spire, wholly no wholly, engulfed by erosion of the wind, not erased. Curved at angles. An uncovering.

It stood waiting and was lost, its colors one rich traces of ochre and emerald, faintest touches of blues etched in long sweeping lines that declared itself beautiful almost visible were the hooves that built it, sculpting its form like pottery with a reverence.

The air changed, like a split in the air when she made it to the base of the stairs, a line drawn to different currents, a cool breeze rolled out, carrying a soft elusive scent of olives, earthy and green in such a barren place, brushing against her face and neck as she passed, closing her eyes for a moment to let it pass over her, a moment of peace as the cold of the basin receded to let the olive fill it for a moment, with a softer, alive. A phallus of wind. And those dreams leaked still.

She opened her eyes and noticed the light which came from the void, but it felt softer here, less oppressive in twisted nature, it bounced off the temple and spilled downward and cast faint pale rays that gathered in an isolate square at the base of the stairs. In this patch of light the air was warmer.

She stepped into the light without thinking. Firm, smooth and the warmth seeped into her fur, rays of light which touched her face, for a moment it almost felt beautiful, heavy and soft at once.

The waters arise and take me finally
And my remembrance is
Nihil, nihil, nihil, nihil, nihil, nihil, nihil, nihil, nihil, nihil, nihil, nihil

In this golden wedding of sorrow
In this golden wedding
In this golden wedding of sorrow
In this golden wedding

Lapis lazuli swell
That will sweep all of this away

Author's Note