I Know

I’ve known a silence
Cast against the purple night clouds.
I’ve known a silence plastered
To the burial shroud.
I’ve taken peace with a knowledge
Past before me,
But I feel disease with a knowledge
At the core of me.
I’ve been strong where passage
Toward light’s allowed me,
Shaken hands with darkness that implored me.
Sometimes to appease a wolf
I’ve cut the chicken’s throat myself,
Drunk the poison being served at the table of the dying.
I wonder how I can ever mend this.
How to walk without the glancing
How to be proud and thorough…
I chose to hold the blood thorns for the man
Who dipped the darts and threw them.
But they tell me I was just a child.