De Mortuis

By Clay Franklin Johnson

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space…

—Lord Byron, ‘Darkness’

The stars are quenched
In darkness…

Now swells the intermingling din; the jar
Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb;
The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout,
The ceaseless clangour, and the rush of men
Inebriate with rage.

—Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab

Inkily I trace faint shapes
upon the bone-white
blank page

My mind’s eye divinely ripe
with autumn auguries
of undefined lines

Lengthening shadows othered
and stranged by subtle fancies
of the spirit double

Wondrously it speaks to me
In a familiar language
Of another world

How unlikely it once seemed
to recognize death’s voice
in a vision undreamed

I see unanswered questions
written like requiems
in craven ink-strokes

I see unquiet ghosts
clothed in echoes
of luciferous light

Ghost-like familiarity
Dripping white-fire moonlight into
Cold incorporeality

Yet is this how I shall
remember what remains
of the dead?

To trace their names
in liquid mourning stone
of Whitbyan jet?

No, for I sleep no more
in this starless night-world
ceaseless with war

For I see sun-golden wheat
in independent gleams
prosperous with peace

Sovereignty in artistry
soaked in spring’s heavenly hues
of Vermeerean duality

Claude’s Enchanted Castle blues
glistening like stone-ground
lapis lazuli

Sublimed like Venetian waters
of beyond-the-sea
ultramarine

With lead-tin yellows leonine
wet with the gilt-golden
giallolino glamourie

Painted light like liquid skies
melting to the music
of a Turner sunrise

But even blithe colors of spring
speak to me darkly
in a C minor key

Sharp as teeth sharpened by hate
when bloody revenge becomes
a thirst to be slaked

For bright Apollo is dead
when starless skies fall with war
in smoking beams of red

The screams echo in the blast
reminding the dying
of Empire’s past

The stars are extinguished
and wander without music
in celestial silence

The dissonant melody
is death’s inharmony
with duality

For the dark side of two stories
is the tragedy
of one ending

To divine dead stars like bones
speaks in uncertainties
and unknowns

Ghosts of ghosts
echoes of echoes
in unavenged innocence

Written as requiems
in ink-strokes
of darkness and dissonance.



Clay Franklin Johnson is a writer, amateur pianist, devoted animal lover, and incorrigible reader of Gothic literature and Romantic poetry.  Clay is the author of A Ride Through Faerie & Other Poems (2021), an illustrated collection of poetry published by Gothic Keats Press.  His collection’s eponymous poem, “A Ride Through Faerie”, was presented at “Ill met by moonlight”: Gothic encounters with enchantment and the Faerie realms in literature and culture, a conference organized by the Open Graves, Open Minds Project (OGOM) with the University of Hertfordshire.  Find out more on his website at www.clayfjohnson.com or follow him on Twitter @ClayFJohnson.