The Garden of Earthly Delights

The Master played his trumpets by the crystal
Fountains, in perfect golden symmetry
Bare, careless were we under the sun.
Bird alike man and man alike bird, we soared
Through Eve’s fair hair and orchards

Sickeningly sweet in smell. So full of life
Under vitreous domes like flower crowns,
Which no troubled air dared disturb,
An orchestra of bodies, blind, fruit-headed
And light and angel-winged.

The great plateau heaved in bloom,
And animals and humans
In a stampede of fur and wet skin
Ran as the pools drained out
With a swirl like a bathtub whirlpool.

Faultless feathered wombs
Burst like shiny soap bubbles,
And black flakes fell
From the sky: corroded skin and snow.
I’m blown and twisted out of shape.

My hollow carcass cracks like egg-shells.
Dusted porcelain, dead flaking skin,
A home where mothers forever wait
For their child to return.
Plastered and lacquered I stand;

An elephant tea-time statuette
Stalled in a half-step to oblivion
On boats that will not take me anywhere.
They are stuck in tar and pale bodies
Scattered like sickly stars. My brow

Is, heavily, a stage for stranger’s tragedy,
A weeping potter’s wheel.
A crooked spinner in a nun’s solemnity,
A tramp, a heart with no strings.
Ferrous winds whip salt

Into my hair like sand. The bell
Is sounding the alarm, cities scorch.
Deformed rag dolls gazing to the
Left. I there too eagerly ran off from the scene
Between heaven and hell.