In the valley of Elah¹,
the new music was exquisite
in its ugliness:
all insect-legged, dismembered, and eyeless,
full of brass-bright intellect
and swift precision;
elaborate in its labyrinth—
trumpet-sure, seeking, and striving,
quick to pounce upon the trail
of its crumbs,
holding them up to the sun
as miraculous as manna.
But look!
Here she comes,
The Empress,
with her new orphan
plucked out of her before its time,
paraded up and down a dozen stairs.
He is strange and misshapen,
yet somehow hospitable to breath
— the effigy of her ascendancy,
cooing, keening, sobbing
down to a stifled quiet.
The new music presses on.
This is their time.
As eyes bezel with tears,
thought appears to move forward,
persuades itself
with the sleights of a thousand deviations
that it stalks on long strides,
dispensing kindness,
calling the roar —
choked in its throat —
silence:
koan of a deeper, darker Tartarus.
At the height of their tumult
comes a sudden halt,
and a word is shouted out in chorus:
LOVE!
And all fall prostrate
before the one syllable,
nailed to the air by its four rivets
— the last gasps of the new music
unravelling to a final rest.
Then she rides out,
The Empress,
galloping boldly across the wasteland,
carrying the pennon of her creed
— fluttering to the memory of wind.
She has her tribute, and a frayed old sling,
for the company
of his searching fingers:
clutching hands,
latching lips,
****** in the loose ribs
of his swaddling bands
— as footfalls toll,
with dragging thunder,
on the desert sands.