Mephistopheles

A poem about leaving a place and a person which had both crushed me

"Mephistopheles"

A vantage from the gates, past headstones and Linden trees
Distant graphite sky, flickers silent tongues to taste the earth
The whirring tinnitus threatens my tenuous sanity
Finally the thunder arrives, weakened by distance
As it fell between the clouds with the rain

I walk to the cavernous door, woodwormed blackened timber
This chthonic threshold once more, once within
The birds abandon me with primeval terror
Ushered away by Pan, who ventured from the trees
Away from my host, Mephistopheles, who ventured from beneath
From under blue brick, sand and clay, bones,
sightless eyes and wide open jawbones.

We meet,
I am to leave this place, I say,
the piece of my soul you took away, that stays here
I want it back, intact, I need to be complete again.
He smiles and denies, he says, you paid that price back then
You can leave, you can go, never to return, but know
This silver sliver of soul remains, until the end of these days,
Watching the gates.