Before the Wall

Winning fame through fine language,
clever as a fool outside the castle walls,
somewhere between windswept Winslow
and grey Purgatory and dapper Dante's hell,
I watched the petrified forest sink and melt,
the sun sank and the sea turned back,
then returned as a tsunami,
swallowing the entire cities
of Periander, Segeum and Cleophon,
leaving to float the caskets and tomb flowers

We spoke in epithets, cursed spells in cursive,
ran from the lion, speaking in tongues, no verses
for Eve or Adam, up a tree, down a canyon,
hiding behind browned and heat-burdened leaves,
making a special dinner for the snake,
jumping Jake Satan, who was not so bad,
once you got to know him,
his cup running over the brim,
and we, forced to be deaf,
suffered in the silence
of the One True Lord!

Before the rhinoceros was made white,
before Eden was made less recognizable,
before the first stones were cracked and stacked,
before the animals lost their voice,
of the first drum, the musical tones,
before the first sunset was made diffuse by dust,
and the double-hearted angels
made portals for rights of passage,
I walked lonely and isolated,
down rows of bright tulips and roses

Fortified against the relapse,
leaning toward resistence,
nontheless surrendered, rested,
before the precautionary comfort
of the pill yet to be invented