The Morning of the Hurricanes Part 2

Continued from Part 1 The Beggars ’neath the balustrades, and broken Children, Chambermaids, are running wild from wraiths, afraid of dreams where death redoubles. They fritter time with tattered threads (from ragged clothes they’ve left in shreds), crocheting hoods to hide their heads and faces, full of rubble. But many things will not remain the Morning of the Hurricanes, when goblets filled with cool champagne evaporate in bubbles. The White-Robed Maid adorns the trash with charnel urns awash in ash, then fumbles with an untied sash while pacing in the Palace. Her hopes congeal in coffee spoons with memories adrift in dunes; yet, still she smiles with teeth like prunes and lips of painted callus. And long before the midnight drains, the Saviour wakes, the Loser gains, the waters of the Hurricanes will fill her empty chalice. The storm (behind the clarinets, the silver flutes, the castanets, the foghorns belching in quartets, the bagpipes, puffed and swollen) is keeping time to tambourines while Tom Thumb and the Four-Inch Queen, pick up the shards and smithereens of moments lost or stolen. They’re trekking through the Dim Domains (where fountains weep, the mountain wanes), yet can’t escape the Hurricanes with trundling eyes patrollin’. The Crowds (arrayed in jewels) in jails, stoop, peering through a fence of nails while light behind their eyeballs pales with plastic flame that sputters. They huddle there because they must (with eyelids hung like peeling rust, their tears, palled pellets in the dust), behind the bolted shutters. They’ll reawake without their pains the Morning of the Hurricanes, without their sores, without their stains, their agonies will fill the drains and overflow the gutters. End