While moonlight held the sky,

  an old beast slumbered fitfully,

  beset by fever dreams

  of swiftly flickering lights.

  At night desire came,

  the fierce fiend of a distempered memory,

  an ember flickering amidst the ashes

  of the past

  I beheld a flickering light in the night sky

  falling to the horizon,

  and beneath the starburst gleam,

  I pursued the fading radiance

  of that far-flung dream

  Through night and day

  storm, calm and mist,

  frantic with an ineffable anguish,

  a blind-driven flight spurred on

  by the whips of nameless masters -

  the passions that drive the heart.

  Beneath the cold glare

  of the desolate night,

  through mountain paths and trackless swamps

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  stirring with careless steps

  the swarm of fireflies at rest,

  and they surge skyward

  a cloud of earth-born stars,

  flickering in their panic.

  Day after a day,

  a dream born from feverish need

  in the hours wasted on idle fancies,

  bearing within my heart

  a warm silence,

  brooding on a decaying flame,

  and with time came the autumn

  of the strange suffering

  of the fire and the yearning

  while the temperate winds

  sang dirges in the twilit air.

  My hand reached out to grasp

  the sunset,

  to seize it

  and freeze this moment in time.

  But here, heaven remained

  bloodstained red,

  the murky shades immersed

  in an image, silent, cold and deathless,

  as a spark ignited within the soul,

  whispers rising like vapours from the muck and mire

  of ordinary life

  that ministered now the fading light.

  There is a dream there, somewhere

  a flicker of amber

  deep within.

  Life, and the radiance that consumed it

  emanated a remembered heat,

  the memory of an inferno

  burning secretly

  in the recesses of the soul.

  But from the ashes, new hope

  springs from hopelessness

  and the cage of despair is shattered

  at the sound of a songbird's

  morning serenade.

  From that fitful dream I woke

  and the ashes in my soul began to burn,

  an ember,

  quickly taking flame

  once more.