Scorpions & Drought

There I stand, in a wood of trees pale as if bones
eroded by nefarious winds,
haunted by their barking echoes.
Were doubts to arise that God retreats slowly from this world
which until now renewed itself with every dawn
nurtured by holy breath:
behold those mountains
the rocks of which turn to ghosts
and those roots petrified in thirst,
vainly defying the opaque silence of hollow rivers,
and bury your doubts in a profane grave.

The greatest proof of justice and mercy
God's supreme goodness
and his loving caress
inhabit these abrasive pillars of dust,
the black veil at the horizon
soon to hush in velvet silence
your daughter's last breath,
crowning you the depositary
of ten thousand indignities:
the eminent king of a world in dismay.

Every singularity is filed down
by this continuous ochre stream.
The only memory and existence
those you cherished ever had
and ever could have,
the memory of the heart,
is overcome by the drought of the heart:
a desert with no life but scorpions
coming as a swarm, as a flood
with an abundance of deadly stings...
one for every remembrance
one for every comforting echo of the past
for blithe days of hope turned sour.