Book of Hours

two cardinals. wrapped in red & roped in ring. with sticks for the beating.
a third reads quietly from the Book of Hours with such measured technique.
chambers echo with bloody blow, 
ichor textures the sandy marbled floor.
like drumbeats for an unattended folk dance. galeri volanti.
rod is gripped in golden glove.
viol wood & sticky rosined string. what graves are being dug in emptying song?
above, the cloud of light, acute & violating.
three hundred some years now, and nothing to show.
a third reads from the Book of Hours.
now, naught but error on display - like a bloodthirsty carnival.
words of sick dementia.

“I sleep with The Cantos under my pillow
“Just to feel that something that was lacking
“What false sovereign individuality
“And now in swim trunks, I look to the low rivers,
“Cocytus appears before my hollow eyes
“Columns of false marble and mumbling older men,
"What generationlessness did we inherit?
“No guide of old voice to draw us into time
“Forlorn ! the undercurrent.
“Sniff the fragrance, that oud tone of things
“But no, the windows are covered with dark shades,
“A funeral to sacrificed spirit.
“No comfort to the soul
“False laws of babbling hysterics
“Degeneration in this lifeless deathcell.
“The furniture is rearranged each night by the master of the house,
“Just to make you feel disquiet.
“Do you feel at all disquiet?
“The trees are melting in the sunlight
“But birds still sing their age-old song.”