Ashes Of The Once-Known Poem by Savva Emanon

Here in this suffering, this crucible womb,
The known gods falter, their altars go blind.
Each creed, once golden, now echoes of doom,
Are stripped by the blaze of a self left behind.

The fire, a trickster, conjured by me,
Fed on illusions, I named as my truth,
Burned every surety, scorched every plea,
And laughed in the voice of my long-lost youth.

Beliefs like paper, curled in despair,
Whispered of meaning as smoke drew near;
No prayer could escape, no breath of air,
Only silence now, and the sting of fear.

Oh, sacred pyre, dark alchemist flame,
You steal without mercy, without regret.
Yet in your furnace, I learn my name,
One I had buried, one I'd forget.

Entombed in ash, no breath, no form,
Not dead, but held in the hush of becoming.
This, the still of the spiral storm,
Where soul sheds skin and blood stops drumming.

And then...

In the hush, a tremor, soft as thought.
From soot, from ruin, from what was unmade,
A flicker, a shimmer, a heartbeat caught,
A wing unfolds in the charcoal shade.

Phoenix, I rise, raw, unmasked, untried,
No longer chained to the truths I knew.
From the furnace of lies and the self that died,
Emerges a being fierce and new.

More beautiful now for the burn I bore,
More sovereign now for the faith I lost,
For to rise is not to be as before,
But to bear the bloom that survived the cost.