Nosferatu

NOSFERATU

I have heard that the northern hunters

Have many words for snow:

A dictionary of nuances

Beyond the flawed horizons of translation,

Subtleties of survival

Denied to the eyes of outsiders:

Whole spectra of white and of crystal.

Are you impressed? It is nothing;

Nothing

Beside my apocrypha of shadows.

To define all the shades of my world

Would take an archive of darkness.

An inventory even of its lesser depths

Would fill whole racks with scrolls,

Stacked manuscripts,

Stained and blackened tracts

Unknown to the sun.

But what need would you have

To consult these lexicons of the night?

There is nothing for you here;

Nothing

Save for shadows, and a hunger

Beyond any hunger which you can imagine,

And the absence of God and of death.

© David Bergen