Signal from another world

People closed in around me, but never took me.
They surrounded me, yet they could not encircle me.

How ironic their words were.
I absorbed entire forbidden scriptures
while they parroted empty slogans.

How strange their smiles were.
I sensed nothing behind them
but the unconsciousness of plants.

They could not assimilate me;
they could not reduce me to their mediocrity.

They were too late;
I had already evacuated my soul from society.

I climbed until the heights accepted me,
and, like a solitary eagle,
built my nest upon the mountain's edge.

I began to speak another language.

I began to measure existence
by another time.

I founded a civilization
of different thoughts,
different dreams,
and different emotions.

I built a cathedral of barracks
and admitted no one
who could disturb
the general's vow.

I had no world of my own,
no voice to speak for mine.

So I built one
that could stand against the world,
that could pass judgment on every other nation.

Now there is only me
and the trace I leave behind,
the last living consciousness
within this abyssal existence.

Yet one faith I could not kill,
one belief I could not extinguish,
still survives my hands,
still disturbs the course of my thoughts.

The bond was never broken.

The wound was never forgotten.

I keep trying
to reach the unreachable,
to speak with the indifferent alien.

From the heights
I send my signals,
knowing they never reach a listening ear.

May they at least travel
as far as the horizon.

May they find
those other summits
I cannot yet dream beyond.

For years
I have waited
for a single signal
in return.

None returned.

Only the answer of silence,
though this world
is a noisy place.

The valley's liveliness
remains like dead earth
pretending to be grass.

Below,
the surface swarms with life,
like a final judgment.

Yet that is death.

Above,
silence freezes
like a cathedral of ice.

Yet this frozen place,
this uninhabitable refuge,
is the only form of life.

― Atrona Grizel