the face rising
the face rising from the water is not her father
or even the shattered mirror
madness lives in, no cozy grin of psychosis
in cold and sinless wards,
between the walls of heaven
and the words of hell
the innocent cell
like every cell in her forgotten
flesh, wet stench of death
or memories of sex.
nor is it even the self returning,
no wrinkled crone, no witch
on her humble chronicled hill
where gods were never welcome
much,
the face rising is the everyday flesh,
covered with the recalcitrant silence
of one choked scream that never stops:
it is the death and madness
she never chose to notice,
all the everyday lakes where suicides
stop
nothing is ever given us
there is nothing to forgive
or forget; the dead
have never screamed,
not as yet
between man and the empty
between man and man they have placed evil
between man and man they have placed evil
and cruelty, they have sung so eloquently
of the gods we have forgotten,
have let die from us as memories die
truthful at sunrise, broken like vampires
in busy winds. and we sing today
of man and the empty senseless,
of bottles of muddy absolution
to wash our callused hands in, hands
that have held in swords and engines,
in other instruments of simple worship,
that tell of the profound dignity of night
and all its suicides stored up,
hung out to dry like washing on a line,
like everything dead and everything alive -
memories are not made out of time
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