Jerusalem adream, incorruptible, inviting,

turning endlessly inward.

Within, ever and always virginal, she lies,

inviting, leading, waiting to be lead.

.

.

.

I dreamt of thin and rutted roads linking towns not unalike to towns not dissimilar, towns fresh in memory to towns misremembered from seasons before. Of a clearing in the shadow of spires, beside a potter’s field, marked with stocks and tying posts and a ribbonless and unaffecting may-pole. I dreamt of bells upon the harness, and bells upon the wheels, and bells upon the barker’s cap; of a crowd jostling for a view, standing upon gravestones and packed mounds, gathered about a pageant wagon upon which, posed in stiff imitation of chapel art, a bare and uninspiring Adam and a bare and ungratifying Eve habituate lines, producing from about them a goldfinch, a dog, a hen, an olive branch, a lizard, a posy – speaking with each a sound directly echoed by the other. The black-garbed expositor, left with little beyond, strove to mimic the sounds they spoke. The audience shuffled, restless, half-able to hear, and hearing nothing of sense. Aside the stage venerable Satan watched instead new-joined Gabriel adjust her halo, her swordbelt, the straps of her wings; spoke to her the hunger she made in his groin, speaking behind, about, within his yawned “what are they doing?”: “I am an apple, thrown to your feet.”

(With tongs she took from the altar

A cloth soaked with my own blood, and touched it to my lips

A noble man, a noble woman;

In glass sealed;

Naked in impassioned union.

By blood to each other bound;