Stone People

Stone People

On an old world, or under it,

we found them,

or at least I think we did,

he said. Another drink! and I,

eager for the tale, supplied it.

The ruins were so old

even granite statuary

could not be dated,

or yielded nonsense dates

in the billions of years.

We could not read the ancient script,

it may some day be translated,

but we found catacombs

that stretched downward for kilometers

until the heat played tricks with our

eyes, the walls seemed to flow like taffy,

and we could go no further

I call them catacombs,

for though we found no bones,

we found death. Death crept upon us

from the walls, which spoke from tortured faces

that warped and ran across the stone, and I left

five teammates in those airless tunnels

from which we somehow

could not retrieve them...

when we tried to find their bodies

they had moved, or we somehow missed

the tunnels where they had been lost.

It was as if the network of claustrophobic

passageways had not yet decided

on its final form.

Don't ask for more, I don't

have it. I only know I'm through with space.

I asked no questions; I too

have seen or felt

the unspeakable out there

in that universe undreamt-of

that we call our own.

Into the stones we went,

there we found ourselves, crystal people,

deathless trilobite eyes forever hidden

from the violence of our hunger,

and the memory of our flesh,

yet we could not escape our legacy, which had

depopulated the planet and gnawed without cease

at our vitals. When the strangers came we

could not help but

prey for release.

In vain.

the end