The Frolic

I take your hand

We walk towards where the roses once grew

I lie back in the grass and dream of how it once was

The rubbish-strewn streets

Ripe-rising smell of gutters and rain

The children abandoned

Mother recalls child in pool

What is that that lies? deadchilddead

I have such nightmares and you're all in all of them

It's worse than you or I can ever know

On the edge of the clouds we crouch

We smile and spit

The pool of saliva corruscates below our feet

It shifts

Children with knives begin to rise from it

They laugh and blow kisses at the moon

We think it's the rain

I see a bird move onto the table in my garden

Its beak scoops up the seeds

The green of the grass and the blue of the sky

Are immense and terrifying

Everything seems so close

So very very close

Should a storm come

Should a storm break and halo all around us

As some savage and blind god

Jerking his hands out to us

The birds drop all around us

I walk into the altar room

All the buddhas are smashed there

Avalokitesvara's hundred faces lie shattered

I have done this

I walk to the makeshift redbrick altar a hundred years ago

There is a small brass image there

I have built this

The red and black ants mill around

Unknown journeys

I take my lighter and torch them

I take my lighter and torch them

I weep, I weep

The ants scatter or writhe

I take my lighter and torch them torch them

I have done this

I am surrounded by butterflies

The child's legs lay smashed

Please pray for him, she says to me

Too late

Alas, oh so too late

(Dragonflies and mayflies

No more dying, no more dying, DEAD)

I see the twinkling stars

I drop a photograph

I bend to pick it up

My heart leaps as I see your face

Stare up at me from the paper

As if still alive on this earth

When I return my eyes to the stars

They gather

They pucker

And are blind

And are blind

So lost are we

Oh what have I become

I have become that I hate

I have become that I shall say no

The bird is dead now alas

A voice whispers to me

And says nothing nothing

There is nothing

I look to my right and see her face again

And again the world disappears

And all fall down

All fall down

All fall down I all fall down

All fall down I all fall down

We all fall down

We all fall down

What shadows we are...