Freedom Ritual

In the morning I'd wake up to rise,
And I wouldn't know nothing but the shape of her eyes,
Hear the dead wood rattling on the windowpane,
Dark voice in the wind that recalled her name.

Then: funeral music, funereal song,
And the ghosts crushed the cul-de-sacs al the night long --
Song-drunk, the death band hurled their breath toward the morn
And the town changed forever, delivered by horns!

The road from the town split the hills right in two
And those who felt fearful lit out two by two
And their children were left to measure the sound
And feed the giant fires with the houses of town,

They were flashes of flesh crashing housedoors down,
Wine-drunk in the churchyards, climbing burial mounds,
And the band marched in circles, continued the sounds
Of ghosts gilding the name of the last living town!

And, me, I was frightened by what stood at stake
Stayed hidden in darkness like a pale poison snake,
And I rose when her dark vision drowned me like light
And I rushed from my cellar to reclaim the night,

And I took to the hills and I watched the place burn
And the sound of it swelled like a satisfied worm
And the band found an air in the gasps of the flame
And then left as they played -- the way that they came!

The wild children watched for them, but I knew it was over
I turned to the highway, was renamed a rover:
It be oncome the evening and oncome the towns
I'll claw at the darkness in search of the sounds --

As I pass by the gauntlets of tornapart fields,
Dead wells by the wayside and jettisoned shields,
I'll search for the sound, though it's never I'll find,
And I'll die poor and hopeful with one color of mind!