Hanging day.
A hollow earth
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.
In 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 them on their 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?

Let not man speak of justice, guilt
Far away, blood-stained in their
Tens of thousands, hands that damned.
These wretches to the pit triumph
But here, alone the solitary deed.