Ultima Multis

Someone called it a crack of filthy thunder
From a clear September sky
Then the shower of leaves of paper
Come to presage an end to summer or an age

Within the stairwell eyes confess
It must be an incident of a serious sort
How their eyes consort, guessing; as they descend,
The terms of their return

Beyond hope of escape
People hold hands for the irretrievable fall
Down the faces of those sky-comprehending cliffs
To nowhere and no one and nothing at all

Towers built to transcend thoughts of death
Fail to contend the impending pall
The obscuring of one's own outstretched palm
By dust to dust to dust

And lifting, nothing remains whole,
Nothing familiar
Except how we humans make each other suffer
Save that longed-for linking, one with another