In Her Remarks Poem by Barry Van Asten

When the blossom came, I noticed
Only half a tree had bloomed,
And a cavity showed me more than
The geometry of skull;
Through an opening, asteroids flew
And fired those scarab eyes still.

An Atlas, impaled in the cornfields
Surrounded by bird forms and iron gates:
An on/off receiver of white noise;
A device for scrying the airwaves.

And I saw, within a room
A hurried ghost had come to view,
With its motions steered by planets
Whistling through the here and now;
An inner chamber, of silk in winter blue,
Where a woman sat gazing down
Towards her triangled desire,
Where her dress had creased to the moon.

But nearby, and unable to sleep,
Stinking Death and spinster Brunnhilde
Turned to weep at the decay
And tangle of the tenanted tomb.

In her eyes, something's not done,
These opera ghosts had drawn from the room
All the passions and pains of a life,
Like a kingfisher waltz,
Wasted before her sighs,
Making a Troy of her thoughts.

I heard her say: 'I don't feel this pain;
I don't know of this world's time.
I worship the solemnity within
And the stillness around'.

In the air - mummy dust,
Penetrates the smell of afterall,
And among the tombs and groves
That brings you down towards a stone sun,
Where a filmy mist hangs low
On a landscape changed for evermore:
Glooms of terrific sleep that fall
Dead and form - Egyptian death,
Grim and hoping to blood-in.

An undertaker's palate clicked
In the dry, immovable air.
The elements had plundered, dead from dead,
Yet he was more dead than they were.

Over a dry stone wall, by a tree-lined path:
Solomon's seal in a green moon's gaze,
As ancient as time's rays cast
From the depths of black rage, at those
Terrible trials - I could not register
Nor comprehend the shapes drawn
From the mind:

The ritual of summer;
The marble halls -
The words remembered...
The dark sacrifices recalled,
Where thy ruby gaze was but a cloak -
A Beatrice of perfection; a Persephone of desire...
And Judas shall sleep, sleep, sleep,
When the flesh folds over itself in fear,

While outside, snoozing among the vines,
Displaying stigmata's to the sun,
Dreamt the so-called saviour - Jesus Christ,
Baptising everyone!