ANIOLY KARTY DO GRY (Angels Playing Cards)

This poem was published in my book A LIMITED MEANS OF EXPRESSION published in 2011 by Rattlesnake Press, Pollack Pines, CA.

ANIOLY KARTY DO GRY

(Angels Playing Cards)

There is too much light

In the room for anything irreconcilable

To happen.  It will be recorded

Inside the caves, on the battlefields,

Across the purple moors and darker prairies.

The cards are flipped down upon

The table, voiceless like generations

Forced to speak to each other

Through the dark

Doors of time.

For each card is unforgiven, unforeseen

With traces in its skin of the stillness

Before birth, The Ascent of Mount Carmel,

The Olympian crucifix with its living

Christus smelling like wars and collapse

Through fire of great empires.

There is no betting at all.  All blows away,

Just the open-mouthed angels constantly

Surprised at how the cards fall

As if by chance.

A GO

A GO

There is a keening

On the wind, a kind of clear

Blue wanting that knows how

To use a can opener on the

Air, so that it can tear silver

Lines into the heart.  Oh, there

Will be no blood, for blood is

A veil and time, a great bird

High over the roofs of this town.

We thread our way past the crowds

To discover a land drenched with moon,

Its collection of owls silently winging

Out, over the edge of the lake.  There

is an idiot’s song, a lament caught

On the floor of the night.  How big

It all seems, the words, the voices

From the sink of the city.  It is

As if we were not to find a way

Here, as if God himself were out

For the day inventing Christmas

All over again, so that it might have

A different sound, perhaps that of many

Children, rather than the small golden 

Voice two thousand years old.

When we arrive home, well

Fed and slightly tired, the block

Is strung with colored lights and

Singing can be heard from windows,

Laughter and a crisp of first frost

In the air.  It must have been

Like this over and over again,

So far we have come knowing such

Things, so far we have left them behind.