In a Dark Time

Making the mistake of continuing

we wander now in a meadow of thistles

yet even here we may listen

to the songs of larks.

 

I am afraid of flooding the mind

too suddenly with images

letting these black rooks

flap in their myriads, cawing

to some festival

claws clutching at midnight twigs

half budded only, green tips

coming slowly to the sun.

 

What have I done that suddenly

emerging to the ice-sky's glare

these figurines take life

gyrate, kaleidoscope and waltz

clashing their symbols

omens of bird flights feathering

under heaven?

 

Having strangled God

he got back at me

with whips and great canes

beating slowly my twisting

body on the bed

til I was crying

No No No

and entered an unending

inner scream.

 

I juggle these differently weighted balls

with such care I scarcely move,

the risk of slipping is balanced by total inertia.

My juggling show is so uninteresting

nobody even knows what I've got in the air,

so totally calculated that even I

bore myself to death with repetitions.

 

My screams are as nothing

when I think of tortured Jews

or that woman trapped eternally

in her flying seat

crashed in jungle dying fourteen

days of maggots

among the decaying dead.

 

My scream is all men's

tho particular.

Let me contain            

using its peculiar power to solve

life in living death,

to pass those gates

tempering the soul

to flexible steel -

no exaggeration.

 

This silence may yet lead

to the incomparable silence.

Let me then speak.

Help me -

I will not be lost.