It was at dawn that I knew it,
blackened seraphs spat new truths in my ears,
draped velvet curtains over every Holy Building
until the gold did not shine.
I had been tasting words for twenty years,
repeating strange things to my ribcage, telling
fresh generations with clean cheeks and lips
that I knew how things really were.
I licked wine to the left of the pulpit,
touched the grape juice and the bread, punctured my wrists
with the thickened panes from ogival arches.
I left at dawn due to the discord, a break in the harmony
Stravinsky promised, as he sat atop a black piano winking sternly.
Am I wretched now? Bound on some sybaritic vessel to Gehanna? And am I
never allowed to taste quiet calm of Notre Dame, lest the candles tilt
and burn me alive? There is sweat in me to mark the learned guilt,
they have made locutions to question the nature of my condition.
They say there is no salt in me and perhaps I am not salty,
but I do not want the clasped hands,
the bloodied teeth,
the stink of a lamb too torn by circumstance to walk in a straight line,
the weight of a wretch
in the mask of John the Baptist.
It was many things, the Holy Death.
It was clean eyes and dead eyes; it was to pour milk over my feet,
to step off the pier, look Dante in the eyes and deny his inferno,
to delight in those castigated pleasures of flesh.
Mostly though, it was to nod at Toklas,
and know that what will be remembered at the end is not the carvings in a pew
but a woman with her tresses clipped,
wrapped in cubist paintings.
blackened seraphs spat new truths in my ears,
draped velvet curtains over every Holy Building
until the gold did not shine.
I had been tasting words for twenty years,
repeating strange things to my ribcage, telling
fresh generations with clean cheeks and lips
that I knew how things really were.
I licked wine to the left of the pulpit,
touched the grape juice and the bread, punctured my wrists
with the thickened panes from ogival arches.
I left at dawn due to the discord, a break in the harmony
Stravinsky promised, as he sat atop a black piano winking sternly.
Am I wretched now? Bound on some sybaritic vessel to Gehanna? And am I
never allowed to taste quiet calm of Notre Dame, lest the candles tilt
and burn me alive? There is sweat in me to mark the learned guilt,
they have made locutions to question the nature of my condition.
They say there is no salt in me and perhaps I am not salty,
but I do not want the clasped hands,
the bloodied teeth,
the stink of a lamb too torn by circumstance to walk in a straight line,
the weight of a wretch
in the mask of John the Baptist.
It was many things, the Holy Death.
It was clean eyes and dead eyes; it was to pour milk over my feet,
to step off the pier, look Dante in the eyes and deny his inferno,
to delight in those castigated pleasures of flesh.
Mostly though, it was to nod at Toklas,
and know that what will be remembered at the end is not the carvings in a pew
but a woman with her tresses clipped,
wrapped in cubist paintings.
