[I]In Splendoribus Sanctorum, ex utero, ante luciferum, genui te
[/I]
Upon the water, with only sails and without Moon
The angelic being of shades has erased the horizon
So there is only abyssal dark, Mother of the Infinite
Carried in the centre of daughter Night
Angels never come when you call for them
But only the creaking wood, and then the void in between sound
Through the nexus of waking and sleeping, the abyssal creep:
In looking, hallucination blurs to flesh
In hearing, we lose the shell of ourselves
In feeling, we know again how we are preyed upon …
There is no bird who will enter
She makes their feathers burn in fright if they are drawn too close
But here is one other life form on the lisping sea
A puzzle, who faces the abyssal dark.
While I care for her invalid limbs, wash sleep from dimming eyes
The Priests and the Priestesses wander the waters, the shore,
And give birth to the clouds from their mouths
Speaking only letters dissolving into the abyssal –
Where is He now
He who formed from your letters one key
To keep you from lying on the stones and feeling their warmth as snow shrieked?
He waits in my eyes and hands and word-fragments
To catch and hold me when we both finally fall
January is coming, say the birch woods
And the dark blood from you is a staining angel whilst the snow devours the hills;
The lone buzzard, black in the swirl, is one key in its meeting of the tides
And so midnight
Upon this boat of mine
The waves, the creaking boat, rigging, sails, perhaps the wind …
When I called angels and brought forth Taghan and the shrieking snow
He took me outside to the dark blackness of vast ocean
And, as one stares and stares into the unknown distance, there is that very same aura of ancient awe
And so midnight
Whilst she dreams she is her husband
I, crowned with rare flowers face the abyssal dark in her eyes
So very very easy, then, to imagine so many things below that dark surface or ”out there”
And when I washed her no longer secret places
Somewhere lurking on the surface, watching, waiting…
And so at true Mid-Night
Shall I steer this boat forwards, with the comfort of lights receding,
And over the threshold between salt water and ethe?
The years remind me, just as Winter pulls the trees,
That I have been born before the light
And need to become one key by crossing over