Ouch

I.

Sometimes, when summer dusk comes and the sun
Lights sky, like a fire in a whitesmith's forge
Eyes become giddy with riches and flame
And what glides across your gaze is missed.

II.

Brush dip the sky-line and colour the night
Running where eyes do not help, the woods, the caves
Where only ears and fingertips may aid you
Hoots, mice sound like giants stirred in the brush.

Fears eats your shadow, grow on your shoulder
Pushing your cheek, holding your face from truth
Face them
Face them, as you would children
Face them well, and they will become guards and pets.

III.

Sunset led me into blindness
Where eyes do not help
Into this cathedral, where dark decorates dark
And all ornament is silouhette and scratches
Are saved for morning.

I stumbled amid lice and rotten wood
Till my shoes broke brambles.
I stumbled in the blast of guns
And warfare for ivories.

IV.

Sunset led me into darkness
With but one silk length
Where eyes do not help
Where fears eat your shadow
There came a beast so vast its haunches
Shifted trees like dancers
And its ivory outshone the moon
Each step an earthquake of night falling within night.

With but one length of silk
I stumbled
Amid lice and rotten wood, the scent of earth at night
Till my soles broke brambles like grapes
Morticed brush to paths that lay
To the holloway, to the rising horizon and hills
To the pale nervous scorn of morning light.

V.

Sunset led me into ink
In silouhette decorated cathedrals
I stumbled, the scent of earth at night
Where fear holds your face from truth
Would I cage the moon, would you
Take it from the sky,
Stuffed with straw
Hold it in some room in fear
Of tides, of earthquakes, of night falling
Within night.

With but one length of silk
I hunted earthquakes
And sought to feed them from my hand.
I stumbled.

VI.

In the pale, nervous scorn of morning
When braves slept and mice crept
Feathers slipped silent from the bough.
I sought to call a beast so vast
To my wrist and feed it
From my palm.
I command no other way.

Feathers slipped silent from the bough
After blind, warm, embroidered night
My sore eyes caught a final flight
In false first light's nervous scorn
I saw Minerva's owl at dawn.