a more human space.

"We were contented
with constant things, and stood there
in the interspace between world and toy."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke, "The Fourth Elegy"

***********

Let me say, old children,
let me say to the angel-crumbs,
as I flee to play
in the attics of dreams
and yesteryears,
that you, whom the angels embrace,
you who feel the hand of God
on your knee--

you are clay and kama
and I envy your buoyancy.

You age like a bottle of wine
in the belly of an unknown virgin,
you sing of the swelling ocean,
you are pirouette and hunger,

while I, cosmic astronaut,
orbit round Babylon and its whores,

I suck the marrow from the steeple
and spit the stained glass nativity in the offering plate,
I arrange the shards in patterns
that reflect the Virgin Mary and her gestation.

I weep over my thumb-sized spirit,
bruised from the slamming of Heaven's door.