Taboo

There are lulls in full nights
Overlooked by the moon
When it is a swollen opal
And the night seems deeper
Then, as if it is shrouding
Some secret of solemn kings,
A deviation from the cold steel
Of mechanic and clocks
That chime and drum up
The business of time,
And something finds its way
Through this gap or hole,
Innocence aghast retreats
To glades to escape the cloven
Fallow or the calculated.

We have visions with glass eyes
Of things that will return
As if our days will be made up
Of a succession of events
Brought about by hazy, bad penny
Dreams that weave their way
Through slumber as if they were troops
Marching out a heartbeat,
Or the psychic mutterings made
Wild eyed, the religious, prostrate,
Speak in tongues we do not understand
And this terrifies as much as any dream,
But look closer and there is no order,
Something primordial, mythological,
Like all words returning to alphabet
And chaos, something Jungian -
The shadow that pools in a glut
Of the mind and we look in
As though we were seeking
Our own reflection, only skewed,
Only seeming to lack the handprints
Of our more merciful control,
Words splay out like ink
Webs on blotting paper,
Speech dissolves back to a whisper
As the tall trees in the forest knife
The sky and clouds roll across it
As if they were on horseback,
Wind reeds its way like an incantation,
The hours held back like dogs on leashes,
We wake from these dreams,
Gasping out into the dawn, ‘What is it?’.

Though I do not believe in these things do I?
Magic or Gods or fate or the taboo of words
Or the power of dreams, no, I do not think
I can live under the sway of such things.