"My immortality is a form of absolute emptiness.
I am tired of being the one who records life; I want to become the one who is recorded."
From the stratum of ages I gaze from muteness
Upon a world where a human beats in the dark,
Where time has learned to run through veins.
Sirens howl. An avalanche comes down,
The air melts in the fire,
And every moment, laid bare, is the only one.
There someone silently takes up heavy armour,
Steps into the murk ploughed by war,
Towards a day that is not yet born.
Flesh burns away, falling to ash,
To wrench a thread of light out of hell,
And I watch, as if from behind a wall.
Nothing in me will ache for what is lost.
I am the witness who engraves upon tablets
All that breathes and burns with a glimmer.
But how I envy them their living grief,
When at the call of danger the body
Grips a weapon forged from steel.
When everything goes numb before the blow,
The weight of simple things grows clear:
A mouthful of water, a shoulder that did not shake.
I see the salt in inflamed eyes
And how warmth pulses through endurance
In the sleepless stillness of broken nights.
For mortals have a gravity of their own:
Their every step is a red-hot slab,
Not my sterile shimmer.
This fragility is defenceless and holy.
And I am tired of weaving a shroud out of letters,
Squandering years I never came to know.
Let the wind scatter my lines!
I want ragged wounds and coarse stitches,
To wipe hot blood from split lips.
To flee the pallor of safe words,
To trade my privilege for courage,
To walk into the squall of shrapnel and thunder!
To give up eternity for one mutability...
Farewell, empty, flawless firmament!
With gratitude I accept this vulnerability.
I clothe myself in flesh and set out into death.
And the heart hammers against cold stone,
The vortex swallows me and drags me down.
The record ends. I am a scorching flame.