December 2, 2012

•  

   

   

  The Dance of Christmas   

    

  "When cockleshells turn silver bells

   And mussels grow on every tree

   When frost and snow shall warm us all

   Then shall your love prove true to me"

           

                        (Medieval Lullaby)

       

  They started burning down Columbus Avenue

  The day before the Last Christmas

  And the boutiques and shops were ashes when I left

   

  I drove almost five hundred miles that day without a stop

  Most of it on deserted interstates - Past shut-down tolls and hojos

  Because everybody had gone down into their holes

  Even though the satellite dew-lines hadn't yet lit up

   

  What scared them though was that right after the morning news

  The TV's all went black and I guess everyone figured because the U-N

  Had been torched the night before - maybe this time it was for real

   

  So I was beat and almost out of gas

  And when I saw this thirties-deco sign for Lido gas

  Flashing way off through new snow

  I threw the old Toytota Land Cruiser into lo and plowed right off that six-lane

  Up to this worn-out mom-and-pop on Old Route One

   

  I pumped myself the last four gallons they had left

  And when I went in to see what else there was to boost

  I saw them and they were dancers I was sure

   

  Cheap red wine was all they'd bought and a mars-bar for her

  And they were counting coins out for the old guy in the gloom

  But what intrigued me most was they were dug 

  From a bejewelled evening bag by the emaciated girl

  Who dropped one and it sang so I knew it was real silver

   

  And in the lot outside spun soft by head-lit snow

  I saw that she was middle-big with not much time to go

   

  So I followed their ancient Subaru for twenty-seven miles

  Down through the empty-center of a rivers-split Maine spit

  To a blistered no-name Baptist church smoking on the headland

  Some naked studs bared on its northeast side

  Shingles curled some gone - but all-in-all still mostly fit

   

  Everything round it though had fallen down

  A pocked scape of ice-filled holes once topped by dormered capes

  That spelled a once-and-peopled place

  Now only weirs were remnanted and angle-skewed in coves

  With shredded cuts of spruce where once the working wharves thrust up

  And claws of hard-fasted ice sharpnelled smashed cobs

  Their remains cloned beyond into fantastic sepulchers

  Tide-scalloping the frozen bay

   

  They saw me then before the black set in

  And waved me to the broken church - its back stacked as it was

  Against the massive spruce-head spur

  So that the wind was split into a thousand shafts by sentinel pine

  And softened to pleasant moan inside

   

  And it was warm in there

  A scented salt-sweet smoke hazing the upper beams

  Mixed with the bitter fragrance of the pine-pot on the hearth

  For they were boiling beer to celebrate the birth

   

  God only knows how two of them not two hundred pounds between

  Had tackled up a thousand tons of rock

  And built this russian oven right on that ledging face

  Where once an antiseptic altar stood

  And now that oven's endless chains chimed softly on its reels

  Propelled by driftwood heat which also baked the azymed bread

  Suspended on its shelves

  That warm soaked too in the rock and rose into my bones

  As weary now I settled in a shattered pew

  And waited for the final service to renew

   

   She came and sat beside me then as the boy went round and pumped the lamps

  And as the light bleached out the dark I saw that they were painters too

   They'd decorated every crack and cranny of the vault

  With stern-faced saints and holy maidens and flooded them with gilts

  Sublimated with alizarins and lustrous lazulies

  The apostates had walked out long before the baptists repossessed

  And now the once-naked nave gleamed brilliant

  With streams of their abandoned vestments pulled from encrusted chests

  And hung from soaring astragals

   

  Out of dredged teak from some palatial wreck

  They'd even carved the holy bema-doors

  God's Mother the Theotokos at left - Her Son as always to the right

  Lifted with longing from the jungle-wood

  Festooned with saffroned peri-winks and blue beach-sanded glass

    

  I felt her touch and as I turned to look

  The boy lit robber-candles before each minor saint

  And this I did not understand

   

  Was I wrong?

  Was it just possible they were migrating magyars?

  Perhaps the last two atsigans wrung from an extinguished hindu tribe?

  Doomed by some genetic curse to course this marbled round

  Until the flame they worshipped torrefied our sphere?

  Were they now setting out to steal what they really had not made?

  To take from where they'd knelt?

  Strip the still-hidden apse where they once sprawled

  Sobbing up fears and joys and misbeliefs?

   

   It was with primordial eyes

  Glint-garneted and venerable coals quiescent in reproach

  Love-glistered with sacrificial tears mirrored in mine

  That she dissolved in eloquent relief

  Man-rooted self-centered disbeliefs

   

  God first was Woman - I was certain now

   

  Alone - Haired-over and a dwarf

  She swung down from the shrinking primal forest-dark

  Mothed by the brilliance of abyssinian savannah

  And halting-stood to peer above the taller grass

  Before she squatted on that sun-warmed mound

  To drop her double-helixed babe

   

   She stood before me now

  As the first of the ballistic mycotoxins arched above

  And somehow her strange whisperings told me

  We'd come full circle doppler-wise

  Because the deadly fungus would be followed soon by mop-up mega-shots

   

  As both led me to the lavabo for the last time

  It was that all our tears would mix together in the holy bowl

  And now with purified hands

  We heaped huge cuts of spruce upon the hearth

  To light the farthest corners of the shrine

   

  The chains were lowered and the bread brought forth

  The cups were filled with bitter piney brew

  We drank and drank until the pot was tossed and then I fell

  Before the still-shut screen and slept

   

  When I awoke clad now in purest muslin-white

  The altarstone shone forth from newly-parted amphithyre

  This huge basaltic millstone once carved from pre-silurian slag

  Had been deposited as if by some exalted force before the apse

  Its frontal iridesced by isinglass and malgamed mussel-pearl

  And on its recessed rosewood board cross-carved with sacred signs

  Blazed brilliant the bottle-chalise of their wine

  Filled to its neck (or so it seemed) with rubies cut

  From far lime-caverns of Ceylon

   

  The altarboard held too the paten's ironstone

  With to-be-concecrated bread still fragrant-warm

  From the cob-oven's eucharistic shelf

   And as I lay transfixed

  The boy resplended now in white and cloth-of-gold

  Mounted the sacred stage

  Crismarium cupped in his hands

  He poured the holy oil on all four corners of the board

  Then dipped a tiny square of linen-white and gave it to the girl

   

  Godmother

  She'd robed herself in flowing scarlet-maddered silks

  Thrown on some fabled looms in Radsimir

  A radiant sybil dressed in dazzling organzine

  She placed the unguent-cloth above the center of my eyes

  Anointed

  She gave me of the bread - He of the wine

  And then they sat me down to watch the final dance

   

  The fire roared as they poured on more boughs and drift

  The flames spat-spit beyond stone pillars of the pit

    

   With steps measured in sand through an infinite glass

  They moved to touch - A glittering and sanctified glissant

  Their ageless eyes love-locked in selfless grace

  Then suddenly he lifted her and whirled in place

  Silk-fire fused with cloth-of-gold

  Her body became his

  They were but one imploring form writhing there on the chancel steps

  And now I knew why they had lured me to their gypsery

  Reluctant sacristan they'd made of me as I brought forth their Child

  And laid it wrapped in altarcloth upon the timeless rock

  Between the bread and wine

   

  I turned to face the oven crimsoning the nave

  In time to see them both consumed by zarathrushtran fire

  For they had cleansed themselves (or so they thought)

  Of iconoclasts like me

  As when they first had danced a thousand centuries ago

  Before the aryan flame

   

  But as before their agonies had been dishonored and abused

  They'd failed again with me and mine

  Or had they?

   

   For as I looked back

  The altarstone was sudden-shapeless black

  The Child and all the holy things were gone

  And in their place

  Splendigital in their malevolence

  Some burnished grains of silica glared

   

  This vacuous legacy of louts

  Had stripped and savage-strobed the gentle shrine

  Into a electronic snake-pit writhery gone mad

  An amplified and syncopated panasonic lunacy

  Riding a thousand-line special matsushita track

   

  And so it came to pass

  In this mind-shattering Cathedral of the Hip

  That Child had been replaced by Chip

   

  Outside the southern fire-force

  Ash-laden with cremated cities of the south

  Had reached the frozen coves

  As super-annulated mega-heat

  Boiled ice into vermillion steam

  I heard her last and first and loveliest of songs

   

  For as I breathed the final rem-soaked firefly

  Exultant in exquisiteness came her primeval lullaby

   

   "When cockleshells turn silver bells

    And mussels grow on every tree

    When frost and snow shall warm us all

    Then shall your love prove true to me”

   

   

   

  • 12:17 pm
  • 1 Comment