Reformation

I

Underneath the pressed-marble foundations

They have buried the witches,

And in the dark library store rooms, they have put away the myth.

Now the dark shape drifts up the stairs,

Stands on the rostrum, and conjures.

A chain of laughter moves around the cocktail party,

Light laughter like the clink of glass and ice

And the jingle of bracelet rings.

The smoke rises between us in a screen,

And everyone is gay except for you,

And you are restless and turn away

To look for nothing,

And could not tell me, if I asked you,

“Why!”

Dante rose out of his grave and passed a bar.

From the asylum where the air is a camouflage

And the intimacy impersonal, he heard Hell’s music.

The well dressed lady blushed and said,

“Would you mind if I call you Father?”

“Not at all, if it helps,” he said.

The well dressed lady bowed her head

And tried to find a way to tell.

When the storm lifts the litter from the streets

And screams around the buildings

Tearing at the wires and throwing down the leaves,

When the earth heaves and breaks itself,

And the sea comes up in a great hand to slap the land,

The shadow rides upon the water

And contorts his face in lightning

For the pain of another power.

II

In my dreams I run until I am out there

In the middle of everywhere, Wyoming,

Where a hundred thousand voices sing the silence,

And clouds as big as giants expand their chests and roar!

Where there is a stillness in between

For the quiet things that sing in the smaller amplitudes

And play on the fragile strings,

Where only flowing water passes never hours

And the undulance and coolness of the stream

Shares the lovely solitude of dreams.

It is a myth the quiet place.

I waken from the illusion of the schedule

Into the shelter of the willow,

The soothing moving of the water,

And the warm enclosing arms of sun.

III

Idumea, Idumea, we have forgotten.

The blur of pigeon wings moves into the evening,

Following the day into the west,

Dipping under the rose edge of the gray bowl

And out into the ever-light.

The great eye dims as earth turns beneath the aperture

And closes away the blue.

Plate-glass windows watch the white translucence

Change through blue into the crystal black of night

And sigh into the security of stars.

Idumea, Idumea, we have forgotten.

The shadow hovers down so near

We cannot see. We only feel the cold, like fear,

Brush past, and wait and play to pass the time

That’s ticking faster than before,

And the dark shape moves from door to door.

Who knows when it has passed

Or whether we are all dead at last?

Read by Charis: