Folie de Minuit

No word, no word, O Lord God!Hanging above the shivering pillarsLike thunder over a brazen city.

Pity? Is there pity?Does pity pour from the multiform pointsOf snow crystals?If the throats of the organ pipesAre numb with cold,Can the boldest bellows' blastMelt their now dumb hosannas?

No word, august and brooding God!No shrivelled spectre of an aching toneCan pierce those bannersWhich hide your face, your hands,Your feet at whose slight treadFrore water curds to freckled sandsSeaweed encrusted.The organ loft is draughty with faint voicesWeeping,Which are not mine, nor would be.I purposed anthems, copper-red and golden,Thrusting to the hearts of Babylonian Kings,Bowed down before Judea and its Highest,That God of Hosts who screens himself with banners.My finger-tips are cast in a shard of silence;The wormy lips of these great, narrow tunnels, the pipes,Are choked with silence;The banners, the banners, are brittle with decayAnd rusted out of colour.

The candles gutter in their sconces,Curling long welts of evil-smelling smoke about my head.The organ's voice is dead,Or is it mine?The banners flapLike palls upon a bierOn windy midnight burialsWhere torches flare a glittering impostureAbout the loneliness of violated sodGashed open for a grave.

Pity me, then,Who cry with wingless psalms,Spellbound in midnight and chill organ pipes.Above my eyes the banners bleedTheir dripping dust-specks,Proclaiming the gaunt glories of successful battles.It would enchant me to see you afloat behind them,Blown for a moment to an eye-catch.But who are you to come for frozen hallelujahs!

And yet I go on silently playing.