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[1]
Before the darkness, crimson light bleeds
from the edges of clouds; when children
stop playing then the darkness comes
and the black angels descend and the dark
gods dance with such fine frenzy as smoke
and flames rise to the moon.
From the beginning
was the void and the void was without
form or word; quaint spirits filled it with
emptiness loneliness and the special silence
heard only after guns and bombs; and in that
darkness there will be a darker flame burning
in the very marrow of their souls leaving them
dumb before the splendour of its prodigious horror.
[2]
And the time may come
when they have no choice
but to dance with skeletons
and ghosts with phantoms
and dream with shadows
and death in umpteen disguises.
The melodies will be seductive
the lyrics spiced with sin
flutes of flame will call them
to the pyres and they will never know
if the music will stop or when
they will be gathered into the terror.
[3]
So play, play until the darkness comes
when the last sound is a child's laugh
in that tiny time between the sunset
and the night where they find themselves
dancing once again joyfully blindfold
through the minefields of the gods
for all the earth is full of darkness
A NEWSPAPER VENDOR ANSWERS HAMLET
To be is to hope
like a newspaper
vendor someone will
come up and look you
straight in the eye and
remember your name
one day
once
ABOUT THE HOUSE
for Loura
I never thought much of it,
the existential void; visually
it would be some deep granitic
abyss with smooth vertical sides;
you could fall into it yet through
an act of mind arrive in its depths
- there seems to be no bottom to it -
undamaged apart from the wounds
you carry with you over the edge.
Dark as Hell itself it would be
crowded in parts like pandemonium
elsewhere a bleak and seductive
desolation where nothing grows
in the pervasive stony dankness:
a relentless sort of place.
That void never entered my mind
as a clean, well-lighted house:
comfortably furnished, decorated
tastefully with fine paintings and
positioned to face the sun precisely
the right way, summer and winter,
set in a luxuriant garden bordered
by old trees, exuding an enviable
almost anachronistic pastoral feel.
I never believed the existential
void would be so homely concealing
vast desolations where vicious spirits
and angry demons lurk disguised
as people we have chosen to love:
a relentless sort of place.