MARBLE TOY
On this defunct St. Emperor Henry’s Day
the cavaliers of Christ broke down the walls
massacred the cityfolk, & found
the Holy Sepulchre. & it was empty.
His midget kingdom was a bit of ground
6 ft. x 6. Beneath Jo’s linen palls
that Body slept, 3 nights… then slipped away.
So Earth corrals the sun again (at mid-July).
Old Henry rotates his lugubrious clay
like cenotaph, or marble toy. Through hells
of blinded crowds – mesmeric crown
for snobbish mobs, heartless autocracy –
deracinated tribes, bent for destruction.
So humankind spins round its Book of Kells
by fiddlehead bronze… on heaven’s way.
7.15.20
