The Golem

Grim and armed we explore an urban hell.
Walking through streets of ash and broken glass,
past scavengers picking through old corpses.
They ignore me, I am not alone.

We pass the remains of a skyscraper,
toppled on its side, ribcage of torn steel.
Flickering witch-lights glow in the darkness,
the city dies hard, it is burning still.

Stinking sulphur smoke boils up from the ground,
bilious and yellow, it sticks and cloys.
We cannot see, we cannot breath the air.
Blind we must scramble to find higher ground.

I climb the buttress of the building,
scrambling up the iron balustrade.
I clear my lungs and see what lies beyond
the ochre haze that rises from beneath.

The city lies like a carpet of ash,
like the last embers in a cooling hearth.
Before us a crater, it stinks of death,
smell the hot blood and baked stone in the air.

This place is what we came for, it is here.
Statue lain within it's earthen cradle,
as cracked and broken as it seems to be
It turns it's granite head and looks at me.