Scorpions & Drought

There I stand, in a wood of trees pale as if bones
 eroded by nefarious winds,
 haunted by their barking echoes.
 Were doubts to arise that God retreats slowly from this world
 which until now renewed itself with every dawn
 nurtured by holy breath:
 behold those mountains
 the rocks of which turn to ghosts
 and those roots petrified in thirst,
 vainly defying the opaque silence of hollow rivers,
 and bury your doubts in a profane grave.
 The greatest proof of justice and mercy
 God's supreme goodness
 and his loving caress
 inhabit these abrasive pillars of dust,
 the black veil at the horizon
 soon to hush in velvet silence
 your daughter's last breath,
 crowning you the depositary
 of ten thousand indignities:
 the eminent king of a world in dismay.
 Every singularity is filed down
 by this continuous ochre stream.
 The only memory and existence
 those you cherished ever had
 and ever could have,
 the memory of the heart,
 is overcome by the drought of the heart:
 a desert with no life but scorpions
 coming as a swarm, as a flood
 with an abundance of deadly stings...
 one for every remembrance
 one for every comforting echo of the past
 for blithe days of hope turned sour.