Procession I - Hanging day Far away, blood-stained in their
Tens of thousands, hands that damned.
Hanging day. These wretches to the pit triumph A hollow earth But here, alone the solitary deed. Echoes footsteps of the grave procession. Walls in sunspots Lean to shadow of the shortening morn.
Behind an eyepatch lushly blue.
The wall of prayer has taken refuge In a piece of blindness, closed. Its grey recessive deeps. Fretful limbs.
And glances that would sometimes
Conjure up a drawbridge Raised but never lowered between Their gathering and my sway.
Withdraw, as all the living world
Belie their absence in a feel of eyes Barred and secret in the empty home. Of shuttered windows, I know the heart. Has journeyed far from present.
Tread. Drop. Dread Drop. Dead.
What may I tell you? What reveal?
I who before them peered unseen Who stood one-legged on the untrodden Verge- lest I should not return.
That I received them? That I wheeled above
and flew beneath them. And brought him on his way. And came to mine, even to the edge Of the unspeakable encirclement? What may I tell you of the five Bell-ringers on the ropes to chimes. Of silence? What tell you of rigors of the law? From watchtowers on stunned walls. Raised to stay a siege of darkness What whisper to their football thunders. Vanishing to shrouds of sunlight?