under glass: at an exhibition
Underglass Black hallways are rooms in basements Beneath the clothes and jewelry Of old days And jade dancers mocking window A pigeon cannot see the darling crumb His eyes lost to concrete dust Prokofiev broke off the retina Like a bow beneath remorse Loaves of bread planed By snapdragons, their mouths gape Too soft now to bite at the news Now alone in a room of dead Birds, shoes, purses Ghosts of giggling children blue with No sound of oppressive observation No watching this funeral please Kitten mummified; the ribbons of immortality Unwrap in spirals of time-edged Long ago The diamonds continue in an upward path Whiskers still feeling the edges of time The door warns you of this impending sense The walls whispers in their Flagrant subtle colour The bowl gathers the words in a bind, a spell To protect a foetus From 1900 to 1960 they embalmed Egypt In a forgotten camera the waters stir Say hello to spring for me in the ink used to Keep fresh the dead And to letter the posters As circus...