Below the Man in anguish, men ride off on white horses, women robed in sackcloth disappear into a bent wood leaving two to his rugged guard. They lack eyes, and in darkness simmers a yellow light; they try to climb their crosses to see it, grunting and tearing and bleeding vanishes into Orpheus’ song. In the women’s words, vanishing from this crag cut into three peaks, The guard whispers of a love— that of a mother for her child, a sister for her brother. The trees begin to open their boughs and funnel them away into musk and earth —away from the scent of blood. Stripped and savaged his body, the temple crumbled, lay limp in a baby’s whimper. His muscles twitched with cramp and skin tears spilling blood red and rich. O my Lord, where shall you go? where shall I? The women have left to soak their tears with the dryads and nymphs. And they gave him sour wine that death’s coming, like with Eve—death’s entrance coming through the mouth and fulfilling some prophecy— so the mouth shall prove death’s expulsion. And in this expulsion, his brow upon the cross, wrought by a smithy older than Hephaestus and in the same manner he brought forth a kingdom unrealized and dawning. But now we are in Lauds, and a child’s cry fills the night’s held breath. Where is the mother, the better Eve? She is returning in the morn with a song. But now we are thankful for Birth, Death...
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