The noise

of exploding shells

and the wails of men

have subsided.

The sounds have drifted

into the unfurled black.

Clouds of mist brood above

a place

where valleys and rivers meet.

Night over the nightmare settles,

cold and mute,

Save where there is heard the soft flutter

of ragged cloth,

Its billowing stirs the Lost within,

the clamour of voices,

wailing and weeping

of all the things

that were

and can never be again.

He is a place,

a torment,

a fear,

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a destiny

in the shape of a man,

hooded and cloaked,

the size of a star,

or the smallest shadow,

a sliver of an instant,

an endless vanishing,

sliding through the infinite,

In that space

between waking and dreams,

cloaked in the ecliptic hues

of the Reaper.

He wanders

on roads empyreal and unseen,

accompanied by the wails

of the damned.

It hums and echoes

from his ragged cloak,

spun into being

when time began

He stands there

in a veil of darkness,

and his raiment,

stirred by cosmic winds,

gives voice to

the memories of lost civilizations,

and the sky is filled

with the scent of dead worlds.