Balm In Gilead

Long pole rise in center of yard Morning like a mass in Latin dictum Vanished. Here she comes White as the mountain robed in mist Echoing the centuries disassembled In the chaos memory of foreign tongue Holding water like a psalm in her hand And watching it break North, South, West, and East like dawn. She shall say a prayer for the village today Three sounds of goat's dead skin Vibrating life into hollow wood will tell I hear it and shout Cleanse me, cleanse me O, cleanse my sin My lust for lucre filthy as the world My celibacy separating the annoyance of the flesh My hatred of the woman who choked my dreams In self suffocating hands rough as broken toothed rocks Jagging my forgiveness And I pray she has heard it For this nation needs a balm from its bitterness From the constant explosion of dreams into gun fire For the self-centered carnality of desire For leaders who neither motivate nor aspire Better than escape of minotaur's rage. She comes praying for all of us like lillies The long thread of faith Looping from the ancestral past to light Mother Icy, put the glass upon the pole And dead stalks now of innocense Flowers that you must away tomorrow After they have shed their leaves like tears. I too am penitent Bathe me, bathe me deep in the bushes potion My faith is in the Balm in Gilead.