From The Sanctuary

Here among the brick buildings,
between tree lined streets,
there is too much spilled blood,

between pounding drum beats,
broken vows,
the view is spoiled,
too much smoke to see the churning city.

wisdom speaks in syllables of silence.
I confess I am afraid;
in order to coherently report,
present my generation to life,
I must climb another perspective
to a sanctuary
in northern clouds, and fall prostrate
before an altar of reconfiguration,

watch as if in vision to record
the assailant and the victim,
wordless among the playing children,
the bruised rose and the torn dress
on the untrammelled, sunlit meadow
in a corner upstairs,

the smiling trusted one who saw
nothing at all. though he could have,
it was all in the mirror,
how the whole crowd missed it,
chose to ignore it,
lest all be shown
their own familiar face,

but the night will mercifully end,
new forgetting
begin again,
the sun will rise on Central Park,
on children sleeping in the bushes,

carriage horses, waiting,
will stand and stamp in their places,
a flagstone cross in the pavement,
while their grooms nurse
stainless mugs of hot coffee.