Everything stares back at me,
nameless, grey and solitary.
Nothing moves, can’t lift my arm,
Speech dies on my leaden tongue.
Meaning drains out of the world
as if some frightful plug were pulled.
I rest in my paralysis
to conceal my helplessness,
a moment of absolute stasis,
but I dare not stay like this
or the world will turn to stone
and nothing will ever move again.
The stillness tightens; I struggle in it
like a wrestler at the limit,
silently pushing to break the mould
and, motionless, to move the world.
It is as if time’s spring has slipped
fractions of infinity are infinite,
and so the aeons settle in,
enormous, familiar, smothering.
Then suddenly it starts to shift:
cold iron shutters slowly lift.
I am incredibly set free
by the arbitrary power that held me.
I question nothing, but grasp reprieve
with the hand of one who must believe.
poetryspeaksong 