and they’ve run the path to our red door
where there’s a ghost at the threshold;
they’ve stormed in
and it may well be a bloody miner
to break the black knight
hanging. And the scaffold may be a cage
on your brother’s chessboard
within itself like the cage I want to cling to
and they’ve graffitied the mirror
chained into the dark. No choice in your proceeding
on your dresser
style. You will not change the pilgrims
and you’ve barricaded your bedroom door
in the angle of their prayers. O elegy
and how the night-doctor is on his way
in sunken scaffolds screaming in the glass
because we’ve woken your aunt
what you cried out as you hung there guillotines
and she says you need
the last earth rock on earth,
your stomach pumped.