Growing deeper. Sing.
The music on the landing on the altar growing deeper, deeper:
Sing.

**

And when he found the snake
And he began touching its beautiful bones
Stirring its bones on the cooling sand, stroking
The sand through the bones, through his fingers, feeling
The whispering touch of time, as it lay in the bones,
All over his skin
And kisses all over his skin
As his wife called out to him.

We have forgotten how to stand
Naked in the face of a foreign land
We come armed
We come, we come, we come
It hurts and surges and we gain.
We gain
We come to gain
Again, I feel those soft words on my back in a falling rain:
You were naked but born into the world of death
You were naked but were born to wear the clothing of the dead.

And so: listen. There.
There it is, rising from the slow dark curve of the narrow stair.
The music, the staring music, staring deep into your soul, staring through
The blacked out stars in their summary constellations stamped
On your sleepless heart.
“Yes,” says the music, growing deeper, “Yes.
Here is another who has lost his naked body in the hems of a living death
The whips and scorns of ironed seams and hems, and hems…”
And the music hems you in and you’re drenched in sadness.

So. So.
He sees you turn to go.
The car is waiting, its mouths open waiting like four open doors
Staring doors like sockets looking out like waiting mouths
On a waiting landscape
And the frozen waiting sun is poised on the flatline of the horizon
And the flatlining clouds speak their fluttering sadness to the flagging breeze
And the winds are cast in sadness
And he casts through the bones of sadness
And he casts through the bones of the snake
The fragile febrile fertile bones of the snake
And he whispers Stop me.
Stop me stop me.
So, so, so.