Lights through a thousand dappled leaves,
Recall my mind from a noon day nap.
The shadow of a tree grows winding on my wall,
Through the variegated path of my window screen.
The tree on a hill shares the sun's bright light,
Warming my shades only partly drawn.
All life is now shadow in my room it does seem.
And now I know not if I wake or I sleep,
Music breathes through the silence to sing,
Wind in the shadows tree leaves or a song?
Drawn from a violin with shadows for string,
Be this visual music within my dream?

His lady Eve passed Adam the apple
in the garden of—even
though He had said: No you mustn't know
good and evil,
so serpentine she birthed the worm,
from a womb of innocence
and rebellion, as he in divine aphelion learned
of sinful inconsequence,
from within a cavity of snakes,
they took twin masquerade masks of death,
arcane and fabled, gold leaf and skeletal,
and laughed at the setting sun,
whose will be done—
to die for their mistakes,
the reptillian led them to their seats,
in a theatre of falling leaves,
front row of decay,
and crowned them gods and scientists.
But from their seats they could not rise,
for it was they were on the stage,
by wisdom caged,
as the snake hissed prophecy:
descendant crowns become collars,
and Eve wept,
tears of spiritual squalor,
       for all the unborn scholars,
choked into submission,
       by sin.

I.

This, a final offering,
before the clipping of wings.
A love like blood,
oh anathema.
A grey declined to black,
oh herem.

It means salvation
knelt with darkness.


II.

So it be!
So it be!
So it be!

Ring the bell,
close the book,
blow out the candle.

Douse the sacred sun
and find belief caught in fishermen's nets.


III.

In silence of angels,
climbing broken ladders,
no ascent, no longer.

Salvation has
knelt with darkness.