Many blurred dead king's faces
Move photolike through time's gape and gauge
The dull drum's thud and drone
Is not heroic battlebeat
This is the grey clock's cog
These are not the banners of heroes
Or flags we should fly
These are not proud pennants
These are the clothes of prisoned mind
These stumps of man on boxes
Are not the vox or voces
Of god or gods
They are the forms of the breaths of dust
This is the great ocean of birth and death
Kye ma kya ma
Oh paradise
Never lost and not to be gained here
These are not the heroes
These are not more than drenched earthtops
These are not more than you or I
Listen:
I swear by the blank of the moon
(Under the archen stars I stand alone)
I swear by the spiting sttreaming sun
These cups of fire, of waterred scales
That cover our laughing round of spaces
Are nothing
Nothing
Like the mouse with horns
A fable full of lightless dark
You are now to me the lost queen
The new age and her train moves on
Behind the smiling lips concealed
The clacking jaws of gummy rictus
Not motionless but emotionless
The savourless lines of open lies
Proclaim:
" This is the best
It shall ever be
Think of the things
That shall never be"
And our soul stalks empty hearted
Empty-handed
As it hangs its light
On hooks of symbols
Hooks of gods and goats and hooks of crooks
You must know: this is not paradise
Father time spins on and grins and skips his
Scythe
Over our flowered heads
And takes us to the muddy house
Of dreamless sleep
Oh this is not paradise
All the empty buildings clutching
Bags of pain and bone and skin
Masks of despair and waterruns
The bells ring out and make no sense
They make the skies bend
Though you wait for me
This is not paradise
(Though you wait for me)
This is not paradise...
____________________________________
by Dickinson