In some long enforced good-night
the darks cold lips kissed sacred ground,
unmoved the earth froze ghostly white

not able to recoil or speak she lay bereft and still,
while nature through that sunless night
bestowed ill deeds at will,

there too the pale daughter, enslaved and cruelly torn
accepted fate as if by rite,
and hushed her breath till dawn.

(Dialogue kicks in after first few bars)

Through a tunnel carved in dead mens bones

the living went to hell

the stoker fed the flaming mouth

as the hammer struck its knell

 

The landscape flattened beneath the plain

its rivers turned to dust

strange tepees ripped ragged by blackened rain

sit fragile on the crust

 

Passengers cling to souls long sold

confessions too late to speak

they will not endure to grow ever-old

for they were not the meek

 

As downward-downward still they surge

descending into fire

the darkest of them all are purged

as hell-flames venture higher

He hadn’t been ill in the clinical sense
but he had destroyed his soul in search of it

He had chased it across deserts and
through
Labyrinthine
Streets
through whore house windows
with no socks on his feet

The Policeman who found his wrung out corpse
rifled his pockets to confirm his thoughts

He had a tattoo of a dog on his upper torso
and the key to a deposit box taped in his shoe

a picture of a child’s gravestone
and inside a spent wallet
a
picture of
you

On the doorstep you crumpled at the finality of words
a kindly neighbour made you some tea
he’d be sorry that it broke you the way that it did

but happy to see you set free

 

The pale Sun clambers up St Andrews steeple
for a moment it trembles like a spinning plate

appealing bells ring out its rise
as the pagan sphere ascends through immaculate skies

dog walkers desecrate the sacred stones
their canine companions water old bones

the ancestors wetted they wander off home
while the bell ringer ponders the silence alone

In the vestry the Vicar prays for a calling
the congregation is shrinking his sermons too boring

the ladies bring jam and sing out of tune
and he fears that his Kingdom has Come far too soon

with so much to do before evensong
how can it be that these days seem so long

but still he will live out his life between bells
rewarded in heaven for this little hell