he would lie on the cliffs

  the forbidding peaks,
  dark and sinister, reaching out
  rousing the old

  horror loomed
  whose boundaries no prophet might fix,
  leaping through open windows at night

  the most grotesque deaths
  had been reported —

  but this
  was not the dense pall
  of mystery —

he had turned,
could no longer be restrained — Hope
fell through the cyclone-whipped dark

  foliage wilted

  all that survived
  had to be shot

She was possessed
  of the devil; there was no night
  too young

For the first time,
  I had sense enough and before
  I reached the street, silence fell
    between us

the fresh air
   blazed with the disgrace
     that spurred us to touch
       and gasp

I
His grimace was
   all he knew --
So everybody saw

A knife-edge,
   grinning into the black
with a howl

Widening, a tunnel
   tearing out, and God bled
in the tower


II
Above fallen corpses
beautiful fields of Nysa

Now, asphodels overrun the field...

   he is dark and tall,
   a wild dog,
   an unripe plum

I thought he was going

(He came.)

They all faded


III
He grinned,
his own leftover

and for a moment
the dusk rages,
scorched-looking,
dumb and ruined

See the cracks,
the **** of the world,
the crinkled sigh
rapt in the river of blood

Something evil
rises, and his eye
stays rapt

a blackbird
in a plum tree

at the edge of civilization,
no rank or status

his disgrace hung
in the center of a spiderweb
yet when he looked at me, my temper broke
with a sort of poisonous respect

in the hoax there was no clear ground.

He knew I was angry

I had to believe it again

the second exit
was on the rope none of us choose

completely naked,
red maddening the bull
the horizon, puddled
upon the sea, slithered
through the blackberry vines,
    spilling out
        against the freckles

her private totem, a love bite

unclenched the tides
through the saltmeat and peach
that fires evolution’s motor

a witch drew a deep breath

  and when the men saw
  she said nothing —

  Nothing happened.

it was her hands —
gathering up blood-soaked cloths
  careless of the evils they did
  with the healer’s gift —
motioned them to come in

Vastening,
  shining like a dark lake
  in the dappled light
  between the cliffs and the sea

She saved me, and I
  gave her the way in the dark

and she was free

Eyes wild, ringed red, gazing out of the page --

   the watcher over the wilderness
   does not sleep.

In the forest primeval
   there is a glade — the real world
   of our filth bleeds in
   drop by drop, reddening
   the sky, and Öli
       witnesses all.

Haunted by apparitions
   of fear, figments
   coming to presence,
   barely corporeal in the dappled sun,
   the great owl knows better
       than to turn away from the unknown;

The aperture, sealed, was yet
   made to be opened, and though
   the devil tree, screaming blood, vomiting
   anguish into the wastes, was felled
      and the blasted heath reclaimed by the forest,

Daring trees grow sparsely
   and wither around the gnarled stump
   where He who has seen too much
   waits, hoping that stupid ******* coyote
   does not bring the city back with him

      ...again