Sonnets on a Journey

The second sonnet features a reference to the Book of Matthew 24: 29-30 and a reference to Dante's Inferno, lines 3-4 and 13 respectively. The day is spent; the sun burns low and ill. Another flock of words fall out of the air. The ripple of thuds is muffled by the still Mirage of smoke arriving on the glare. Dry coughs born of old rebukes unsaid Crack against the western colonnade, As glances slip beneath the lids of lead To pour into the garden and the shade. Far below the crowded balcony That nestles in the villa’s wall of stone The spiders built their bracing colony From twitching legs and carcasses and bone. The pillars heave and sway beneath our feet; Their rustling speaks of tension in the heat. I’d swallowed bitter tears and they fermented; I cracked and what seeped out was oily, black. What couldn’t bare the stain of sin repented? Was I hand? Or eye? Or mole upon your back? For even custard rats would stay a ship In storms this mild and sunny but you fled, Assured that you’d escaped a drowning grip, And left me with the demon you had fed. But see I’ve heard the tales of sacred springs All steaming deep in distant Russian snow And in this house where cloaks can pass for wings I’d never see their warm aurora glow, So while you wait to freeze neck-deep in ice I’m off to wander roads and juggle dice. Crawling across an endless fallow field- A city of junkyard bones and mangled rust, Poking its balding head above the dust These trickles of nervous sweat had left congealed. Perpetual dusk confounds my frantic forage For any redemption from loud monotonous gales. I scrabble and scratch with broken and bleeding nails Through puddles of scree and thick insipid porridge. Distances writhe and scutter across my vision; The night is descending with terminal patience and malice. Wherever it lands all the crannies turn shadowed and callous And suckle upon the gargantuan teat of derision- I spit out some dirt and the winds send it back in my eye, Then all of a sudden a something flutters by.