– for a crippled angel –
green grows the light
through the old church’s
stained glass windows –
and red and golden and a weird shade of blue,
but mostly green,
trying to decompose into
rudimentary terms of human perception
the flawless logic of the sun
from beneath kisses of dust,
the icons stare at the bronze chandelier
hanging unlit
with an air of wise boredom
right in the middle of the ceiling –
people have forgotten
the names of those
who once alchemically turned their hearts
into each of the objects here…
people always forget,
everything
he looks around,
weighing with patience
the grains of silence filling the space,
aware of how,
should a single one of them be dislocated,
meanings would be gained
and meanings would be lost.
he then takes each of the bones of memories
and gently wipes it with his thoughts,
treasuring them
as if in those mystique relics
flew the very marrow of time.
he did that yesterday,
and the day before…
ever since he first came here
the wood is slowly rotting,
hosting tribes of insects
and wormholes,
and there’s no memory in its aura
of the first hands that joined on it
in prayer,
and even the prayers’ ghosts
have been exorcised by sand
nobody sees him.
people come and go,
failing with brilliance the test of faith –
but once in a while
some baby fixes his round eyes on him
and smiles,
acknowledging his existence.
that makes the infirmity easier to bear…
and light continues to flow
through the old glass,
like a fluid limb of the original word,
willingly fracturing itself
inside the blunt gaze,
just like his wings broke eons ago…
LILIANA NEGOI (Endless Journey and in Romanian curcubee în alb şi negru) ~ is a member of our core team on Into the Bardo. She is the author of three published volumes of poetry in English, which is not her mother tongue but one that she came to love especially because of writing: Sands and Shadows, Footsteps on the San – tanka collection and The Hidden Well. The last one can also be heard in audio version, read by the author herself on her SoundCloud site HERE. Many of her creations, both poetry and prose, have been published in various literary magazines.
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