# 12 Poem by B. Sven Telander

Was it just that black path one choose
in length of minute and quickness of hour,
with strength of defeat and weakness of power?
When cancerous scents of bright shade grows
on rivers of laughter; the bloody joke flows
over sounds of the sky, clouds bloated shower;
rain never met ground from so high a tower-
a hunger so thunderous to refuse all repose.

Of enemies imminent there is never a dearth:
what you rejected is now what you crave,
sacrificing yourself for love of the earth;
on strange crusades, to dark gods a slave-
decrying and denying arborescence of birth
consumed in kneeling before love of the grave.