Sunday, February 28, 2010

XXXVI. A plague of austere years

In the seventh gyre of the Age of the Immersed Desolation:

When a summer wind brings a plague of austere years
To snowy boderlands, ten thousand cypress boughs
Will freeze upon glass pedestals. This formidable threshold
To patrimonial fortunes of haughty merchants, unbound
By constitutional restraint, is overturned and cleansed.

The pale-faced enemy, who sold pies in the cast-down streets,
Sits on a broken turret stone, smoke rising from his clothes
Crusted with a red plaster of thick blood and wood ashes.
His sharp head is uplifted, his hair drips with black ribbons.

In the absence of liberality, all winds chasten bitter shelters
For the intact soul: houses gone, chimneys fallen amid
White wings of paper and floating particles of thin ice.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

XXXV. The Boar's enlightenment

In the clauted (cleated?) gyre of the Age of the Sinquel Memorial:

Ringing sparks rise at the strike of a sharp wheel
Against a charred crucifix sheathed in square iron,
Wrapt in the mystery of the swift-coming collapse.
A future shaped around nine days of storming fire,
Final proof absorbed in burned stones still steaming.

A barefooted visitor with red eyes, crouched shoulders
And coy palms disembarks from an enclosed courtyard
In a maze of shrines. At 36 years of age, this lone Boar,
Unfit for the purpose, is briefly allowed to hold dominion.

Unable to avoid unyielding strain after a sleepless year,
A necessary act haunts the Boar's enlightenment
As revelation continues in pages in the fourth part.