heavy lidded perfumes
drift lazily, tainted aromas
inhale the sweetest of the votives
here is the laden, blooming temple,
and here, spilling over,
like coins from the velvet pouch
of an african king,
pours her blossomed flowers
beneath rich draperies
and ebullient golden ornaments,
here is the fertile ground
of fervent worship, fevered,
of shadowed light through stained windows
and walls with no bareness nor chill
no indication of sparsity,
muffled in tapestry and a fine
tabula rasa of foreign carpet
hear the bustle of workers and priests
like pollinated honeybees in the sweat
splaying the bloodied guts
of a newborn lamb
a vermilion and cobalt expression
of mindless love and gory submission
in her rotting, humid temple
here, in the sacrificial dance,
will die