Poem: My Battles!

By Arian Galdini

We rode the Horse of Absence through the night,

Beyond the reach of men, beyond their speech,

We shod its hooves with Hope’s undying light,

And raised up Sacrifice as spur and breach.

In Christ we thought that we might be remade,

And bore the grief the wounded world had shown,

How badly we forgot, how far we’d strayed,

Yet no cross waited where our backs were weighed.

The world was tinder waiting on the spark,

And loved us best when we were far from home,

So poison found the ear of conscience there

And stripped the inward root and marrow bare.

And down we fell, though not because we chose,

Our horse fell too, and with it all things froze.

The mourners stiffened into salt and stone.

No voice remained to weep for us alone.

Time would not speak the names we used to bear.

The merely human entered like bad air.

What held us fast turned dust and ash and clay.

The core lost meaning as it burned away.

Now world and time divide what once was one.

Our thoughts drift far, and farther still the will.

Beyond all hope we stand beneath this sun,

What has been written for our lives stands still.

God’s name is Love, my Lord, my light, my breath.

He is the Way through truth, through life, through death.

In this my land let some small trace take root.

He is the Vine, and I the branch that bears His fruit.

Arian Galdini