An ossuary of ancient
     snow, weighted with broken tears thrown
     out by impatient virgins whose
          bone-barren hearts broach blossoming
          with no remorse, flows over bland
     dreamscapes rolling dawn’s primrose warmth
     to blushing rouge, crushing under
     its path springtime’s pact with the moon,
     that weaning its wails off of wax
          is not something this dying world’s
          funeral dirge of undesired
     muses can do, their witch-fingered
     hazel tracing rail-thin cables

of cracks in its surface, like li(n)es
     undermining ice of its once
     noble prejudice against time,
          equinox and solstice collide
          where blind tradition buries twice
     its ritual’s unkind critics,
     and collapsing here, among dried
     rivers and rusted rivets, what
     structure holds together our souls’
          cold Faraday cages of more
          spiritually-charged matter
     is not fixed architecture, but
     renegade weather, paradox

penetrating thoughts with questions,
     annihilating an entire
     population’s expectations
          of existing forever, fate
          making of jealous lives priceless
     relics, ghosts’ faces remembered
     only because zephyrs whisper
     names of seasons past, as their breath
     passes each departed lover
          whose touch untouched wilderness waits
          to discover, flown crow and crone
     cowering under thorns crowning
     one another, as the sublime

anticipates its cultural
     rape by an unkinder winter—
     civilization’s fall calling
          and covering up its faults, while
          manifesting its creation’s
     more miserable miracle
     of disintegration, painting
     over the forest’s pastoral
     with a favour tasting bitter,
          asking of nature its total
          submission to new rules, to stop
     resisting appropriation
     and embrace having been chosen

for servitude, as facet-toothed
     suits smile diamonds, sputtering
     demands, forcing Fascist-booted
          workmen into platoons of post-
          mortem demolition crews, hired
     to modernize and to remove
     from this temple’s veils what truths their
     ineptitude turns to a tomb—
     and so, with a ‘Sieg Heil!’, see how,
          from city to suburb, Progress®
          moves and chaos prevails, paring
     down mountains and leveling towns
     in the space of midnight-to-noon.