Crucifixion

In the end the moon could stay on the horses’ blinding white curve.
A ray of violent light escaping from the wound
shot the instant of a dead boy’s circumcision into the sky.
Blood flowed down the mountain and the angels searched it out,
but the chalices were wind and eventually filled the shoes.
Lame dogs smoked pipes and the smell of hot leather
turned the fat lips of people vomiting in corners grey.
And long shrieks came from the South of dry night—
the moon’s candles were burning the horses’ phalluses.
A tailor who specialized in purple
had shut three saintly ladies in
and was showing them a skull through his window.
At the edge of the town, kids surrounded a white camel
weeping because at dawn it would have
to pass through the eye of a needle.
O cross! Nails! Thorn!
Thorn driven into bone until planets rust!
As no one was spying the sky could undress.
Then the huge voice was heard and the Pharisees said:
‘This wretched cow’s teats are bursting with milk.’
The crowd closed its doors
and the rain poured down the streets bent on soaking hearts
while evening turned cloudy with beats and woodcutters
and the dark city lay dying under the carpenters’ hammers.
‘The teats of this wretched cow
are stuffed with bird-shot’
said the Pharisees.
But blood soaked their feet and filthy spirits
spangled lake-bubbles over the temple walls.
The precise moment of saving our life became known.
Because the moon washed with water the horses’ burns,
not the first life they silenced in the sand.
Then cold emerged singing its various songs
and frogs lit their lamps on the river’s double banks.
‘This wretched cow, three times cursed,
won’t let us sleep’, said the Pharisees,
and they left for home through turbulent streets,
jostling drunks and spitting the salt of sacrifice,
while blood followed them bleating like a lamb.
That was then,
and the world awoke launching tremulous rivers of moths.