Distant fires, waking, searing

the ground beneath our feet.

Setting ablaze the barren, empty

domesticated wild.

Our sustenance grown cold

now razed, reborn.

Always a phoenix:

now in ash, now

suddenly transformed.

The fires creeping from the roof

that shelters hell, down deep

below, a distant roar, defeated

as our sweat and merriment rain

down upon the deadened grass

grown pale and parched,

now arching up

as if it supped

upon the weary,

wretched living dead.

Fixed points among the heavens,

their blessed beams that trace

rivulets of life

into the cracks that, crawling deep,

seem endless in their abyss.

Life-blood, in torrents,

rains and fills

the empty veins, the shriveled flesh

of dying Earth. She awakens

from the Deep, the Slumber

who thought her soul

his own to measure

and to keep.