I stand on the edge of nothing

I speak to it, because I speak of the people

For to whom do I complain to when,

It is the people I lament

That is why I stand at the edge of nothing.

This time, when I have everything, or so you think,

I speak to the nothing but nothing speaks back to me.

Why does nothing speak back to me?

Why does not the nothing speak up?

For after everything has left, and all is gone,

After a billion years have swept away the peoples,

After a billion dead suns and sun,

Have fallen into the dark abyss

That maybe by the time

My head is back up I can straighten

My back and shake the weight of the world

Off my shoulders that have gone numb with the weight

My muscles that burn with the strain

My skin, slick with rivulets of sweat

My little rivers of blood,

Have cracked my shell and clay

Telling me:

Be still, be silent, be watchful

But beware of that ledge.

Look at my children.

The blood of my children,

Standing just like me,

On the edge of the world

With their shoulders hunched and the their backs bent

Because it was written in their clay

As it was written in mine,

A promise, a vow and a gais

That like me, they will all stand at that ledge

And watch the rest of the world

Pass them by

While their clay, my clay sits there,

Suspended in time,

Some in darkness, others in the cold

Some far away, or so I’m told

Some in the light, Hikari, close.

Hikari that bakes their clay another coat of brown,

Bakes their skin the burnished brown of a river bed during drought

Bakes their blood and bone and sweat into that clay

While they lament the people to the nothingness

When they should blame me because,

After all they are my children

And I have taught them how

To talk to something that would not talk back

To talk to the nothing when nothing talks back

After I gave them their clay and blood curse

Yet there they stand, blaming the people,

And the worlds and the people and the worlds again!

When the people are of two worlds,

A world that carries the nothingness in its heart,

And another that, like me, crouches at the ledge

And carries children just like my children

And wipes bloody sweat from their skin

As their clay flakes away it tells them:

Be still my children when you stand at that ledge

Be still, be silent, be watchful

But beware of that ledge

Beware, but take care,

For one day you too will stand at it,

Lamenting and watching your own

Clay, blood and curse stay still

While the rest of the world looks like it is in motion

You too will tell them of the words I said that time:

Be still for the weight of the world

I would rather carry and lament

Than the weight of nothingness in my heart

When nothing replies

As I call to the nothingness.