The Manticore

This night the beings who divert us

For reasons known but to themselves, are gone.

We are abandoned to dark hours

In which we find the truth we said we wanted.

For which we claimed sufficient courage.

Which positions us precisely. Gives us a name.

We are the Manticore.

Domestically inconvenient.

Without particular purpose.

We pose no riddle to the doomed.

Ask no question for which we have an answer.

Have no wishes to grant. Require No miracles.

All of our dead are happier dead.

The music we thought inside us

Turns out  only in our ear.

Sung to us, shown to us, suggested

So we might have the illusion of identity.

In a yesterday different than tomorrow.

Now we have this empty night

With storm hanging distant in the sky.

All of our voices are departed

The sounds of other's poetry subsides.

We are empty of other's unfulfilled desires.

And have no idea who we are.