Death's Castle

Dusty chinks, caverns and pale walls,
Life once enclosed has gone from your halls,
And now below parapets pitted and brown
Hollow blank crypts are staring down.
By flying buttresses they are shored
Their socketed senses now are flawed.

Unsealed vault and arching dome
Where frail haunting spirits roam,
Thy bleached facade's a reminder grim
Death's mask to our kith and kin.
Cold afront horrid to behold,
Yet no horror in the thin walls old,
For silence lurks behind the pall
The mark of time now past recall.

Men shelter their brows at your ghastly sight,
Their eyes are sightless, blind, not bright,
They see not the words by the temple light.

And speaking not of their chiefest dread,
Their tongues are lost in a damp, mute bed,
By the falsehood of unspoken words they're led.

Turning their heads they hear not the song,
Their muffled ears deaf to the gong,
Unhearing their pitiful state they prolong.

Their chosen deception filtering out,
The must of spoor-odour you leave about,
And all life's sweet perfumes they know not to doubt.

I have it now, sight, sound and all,
Dull smell of relapse in the room where you fall.
Now halted life's kernel, a once bitter taste,
No longer strikes chords of fear and waste.

My eyes, not blind, have shown me the path,
A new mind accepting your wrath.
Low barred dungeon whose stone is rolled,
The secrets of wisdom for us now unfold.
Soft whispers of truth which fill the air
Mask the trumpeter sounding there.
The crunch of the marching step is dull,
All is seen, I gaze on the skull.