I Think of Oskar Werner

I think of Oskar Werner in "The Shoes of the Fisherman." Those eyes that seem to recognize the wealth of human sorrow, those lips that find courage in pity, the countenance of face beholding the arc of human existence in all its glorious turpitude. I think of a boy caught up by the river that roared him with millions of other boys to the steel warm bosom of Der Fuhrer, come to murder the Fatherland.

I dig my clay from the garden of a dreaming child. There is no one I can hurt, there is no one I can't help. Chagal made my heart right before he died, and put it in a little box and whispered to me as the flood broke all words are prayers, colors are the genius of the soul longing to love the world. With the moon we have, we might be the only ones who can see them.

Kings and popes, do they ever shed but tears of rage? Bondage by gold and the art of high deceit. Ashen crosses drawn on our heads, silk ribboned candles crossed at our throat, Jesus stripped down to the ninety six wounds, and every week out go the boxes, one by one, into the hearses that roll as silent as a pressed leaves past the dogs who stand to smell the dead. I dig my clay from the garden of a sleeping child where there are no Fuhrers and there are no popes.

I dig my clay from the garden of a sleeping child
where everything is holy and there are no gods