The Frolic

I take your hand
We walk towards where the roses once grew
I lie back in the grass and dream of how it once was

The rubbish-strewn streets
Ripe rising smell of gutters and rain
The children abandoned
Mother recalls child in pool

What is that that lies?
Dead child, dead
I have such nightmares, and you're all in all of them
It's worse than you or I can ever know

On the edge of the clouds we crouch
We smile and spit
The pool of saliva coruscates below our feet
It shifts
Children with knives begin to rise from it
They laugh and blow kisses at the moon

We think it's the rain
I see a bird move onto the table in my garden
Its beak scoops up the seeds
The green of the grass and the blue of the sky
Are immense and terrifying
Everything seems so close
So very, very close

Should a storm come
Should a storm break and halo all around us
As some savage and blind god
Jerking his hands out to us
The birds drop all around us

I walk into the altar room
All the Buddhas are smashed there
Avalokiteśvara's hundred faces lie shattered
I have done this
I walk to the makeshift red brick altar, a hundred years ago
There is a small brass image there
I have built this
The red and black ants mill around unknown journeys
I take my lighter and torch them
I take my lighter and torch them

I weep, I weep
The ants scatter or writhe
I take my lighter and torch them, torch them
I have done this
I'm surrounded by butterflies
The child's legs lay smashed
"Please pray for him", she says to me
Too late
Alas, oh so too late

Dragonflies and mayflies
No more dying
No more dying
Dead!

I see the twinkling stars
I drop a photograph
I bend to pick it up
My heart leaps as I see your face
Stare up at me from the paper

As if still alive on this Earth
When I return my eyes to the stars
They gathered
They pucker
And are blind
And are blind

So very lost are we
Oh, what have I become?
I have become that I hate
I have become that I shall say no
The bird is dead now alas

A voice whispers to me
And says nothing, nothing
There is nothing
I looked to my right and see her face again
And again the world disappears

And all fall down
All fall down
All fall down
I all fall down
All fall down
I all fall down
We all fall down
We all fall down

What shadows we are