A quiet revolution
Flashed its little white flames across the distant hill,
Its pockmarked mirror throwing
From its sudden arrest
The furry, the passion, the tumult
Back.

They burn, foreseeably fade
Such its pastiche make-up, a portrait
Of lonely little people, effaced by a vague hope
Faintly the earthen hues in which he melts.

Do I dare look with him, with her,
Towards that jutting alcove upon which
Its determined optimism finds its end
Recurrently?
I run my finger along the surrogate river line:
A whole, telling narrative—
Makes me question the lack of detail, the crude
Blotches casting shadows, deforming
Reforming, waylay the blankness
I swear, is put upon.

Hands, it says, I say,
Were once in one, drawn together as drawn in twain:
Instantaneous, as a second thought—
The cold bound them together,
Blue is transfixed on the exhaustion of intensity
They burn frigidly against
Cast from the Eden of their own hearts
Their, the single one, intensity
Leaving them bled out and scattering into the world,
Helpless to the waves of idle chatter,
Helpless to directions, east-to-west,
Helpless to the fantasies of mauve peaks abroad
Goading the stars to glimmer filthily
The feeling whose glimmer thusly ceased
If only circumstantially.

They become one with the road, recovery
Surely falls fat fruitily, under cover
Of evergreen arms, protecting ‘till then, pagan sprites,
Make due—
If you cannot hear the sound of the city far off
If you, faithless, in the endless road
You will understand when one with the earth
The forest promised emptily,
As my gaze just handed them off
To nonexistence.

Take breath of the almighty pearly city!
It holds its own hand, all they could drink in
Drunk off their own
Drunk off blithe luck—to be drawn into the world
Blurring with careless craft into the other;
Toast to our contrast!

I raise an invisible glass with diffidence—do they hear the music?
Do they dance in the eyes that hurt their hearts
Do they wonder of the other? Of what was sacrificed
To inspire quiet contemplation?
I’m witness as this reluctant martyr
Contemplates their eternity, bereft of salvation,
The other may, in the tip of the brush, alighted with red
Soaked, flecked like whiskers
With collusion and abandonment, still call out.

But, the spectacle can only fade; their gates were closed
And I am, sudden, brought to the other pockmarked mirror,
The rude proscenium, marring and barring
Those hands from ever touching.

Never should this have been the foundation
For the house of faith.
And out into the world, I tread,
On to see it tomorrow, cast in similar light.