For centuries children have long learned
The role of a watchful eye, the gleam of recognition,
The subtle dread of silence as the man-with-a-thousand-eyes watches sleepless.
Children sitting beneath walls stained by the sun,
Petals of pots and broken china littered,
Christmas trees decorated by the makings of blistered hands a continent away.
That eye does not come down, it perches above and bats a baleful glance,
Waiting for the culmination where truth is told backwards,
Said so by that ascetic Saint John the Baptist, sucking honey and
Flies dumbfounded at the puppetshow on his tent in the desert.
The city where chaos bled grass without an altar to caress,
No God until stone became pillory for Him.
Once architecture consummated the means for his omnipresent eye,
Man mobilized a thousand strikes in the shadows
Praying for shelter against such oblivion.
Now, from stony heights, peacocks fan their feathers on pavement walks
And backalley-talks, searching for the ripe man.
Twenty-one odd centuries of stony sleep awoken by the
Swift strike-at-nine where now no longer the Magi can look
Up without man’s reflection looking down. On
All Eve’s Day the souls of neither here nor their
Equidistant to and from rose wanderless on
Wardenless pasture across the city. Like papal
Anathema, bodies moved in chimeric flourish
From outlet to outlet, an atavism of
a marketplace centuries ago where block and blade may have
Bled a thief’s hand. From crevice to corner the city now sleeps, still
As a Chinese Jar, lamenting the moment their movement is
Told back to them in ritual repeat. Et ait: Abscondam faciem meam ab eis,
et considerabo novissima eorum.
phoenixswriting 