Words are violence softest. Limits beginning.
The course of life by which we will be judged—
how our utterance led all others to one thought
or eclipsed the next. As boys we were corrupted
by a false king and other fantasies, the designs
of dirty old men imprinted on us through text
with digits ethereal, these godlike icons,
with their tongues deep inside our mouths,
placing razors. Script is the smallest incision.
A million small impressions on the flesh,
a cursed carving through the world.
Could my inward images, an auction motley,
the firework circuit of one word to the next
across a lifetime, ever twist a branch back
to a holy realm’s unveiling, the earth made
final, the prophet scroll unfolding it all
as a flag full of stars in midnight spotlight?
Or is my winding path of thought forever
condemned to dark valleys, drowning rivers,
forever tracing snakeskins cast off
from long dead seraphim? The ancestral stones
are groaning. Gravestones with faces,
eyes and mouths black pits for devouring.
A mist of black static descends the dark wires
that criss cross heaven, noise inherited across
generations. Yet word is the gentlest blood shed.
He has tasted death and chews it up and spits
into the mud and makes new light.
The maw is swallowed by a smaller mouth’s unfailing law.
The tongue of the Lord is a shining sword
that carves a path through carcasses leviathan.
The oldest stones of temples round the world,
their teeth quake and shatter. Minsters monsters
bend before a foundation greater. The heart
of the earth is heartbroken. Its inner light dimmed,
almost a coal extinguished, a molten hellish core
reforged, made bright. Its hollow kingdom conquered.
And now grim men in cassock work pulleys on
vast precipices shadowed. Each abyss a quarry.
One by one lost stones are hoist up out the depths.
Letters are carved upon their faces.
And each one stamps a message
on the surface of the earth.
