The Name of the Star

This was written for my Creative Writing class last fall. For various reasons I haven't posted it until now. I wrote it for an assignment with a multitude of unrelated requirements aimed at inspiring something new and weird.

She is a dire radiance, a star blazing dark
Against the gibbering mouth of pity and self-
Indulgence. Her words dissolve this landscape to stark
Clarity: expose these relics upon this shelf

Of ancient wormwood—sturdy-looking, smelling foul
As decapitated roses—as nothing more
Than hollow tokens, the hooting of a barn owl
Captured by the deaf scribe scratching upon the wet shore.

Because she soars, burning, the world turns—the sun rises—
And the soul of that cursed man, Merlin, master wizard,
Soars above the fields of Albion, no guises
Or masks or crude lies. At long last he hears the word.

With ash on his tongue, the Revelator did speak:
Et nomen stellae dicitur Absinthius—thus,
The name of the star is Wormwood: she shall blaze bleak
Against the dark sky and, pitiless, destroy us.

Like Carthage, Babylon, Ilium before, all falls.
The fields burn, and the cities, and the land and water.
Two star blaze dark together beyond all the walls
Of Earth, the crumbling relics, the noble slaughter.