Blood runs from the torches, Streams in anxious uplifted eyes That stared bleared dreams to daylight, And blindness drowns the wise. 5 I Past the pitching Senate That votes and then forgets, Past the marring crowd that yet Scorns what Love may give or get 10 But will not relent: Numb hands unstitch the star-strung flag, Marrying violence and fate. Violence burns out the masterwork Right heart or touch had thrown 15 Out of the clay of the dark Out of pinched mind's increasing black With careless, vigorous fingers To all the ragged sheen of the stars. Blood runs from the torches; 20 Mad hands demand mad eyes. II From some patched and patterned floor From a pile of scratched and fallen blocks That lion Liberty, born to our call, 25 Who roared all joyous creation once Roars an ancient, forgotten agony Roars dully upon all fours, A gin-drunk Adam who rants his tune Outside the garden wall. 30 Outshouting Lincoln's blind white head Mute at my neck That from my blood-wet shoulders stares, Cold eyes that must wait to wake Whose searing sight once dreamed all things: 35 Equality, Temperance, Justice, Fit substance for one soul to sing. Blood runs from the torches; Mad hands demand mad eyes. III 40 And now that strumpet Ignorance, Her mouth upon my wound, Struts an age's monuments To shivers in the clay; Her feet are hillbilly thick, 45 Her flashed sex a brillo down, A battered pennant upon a stick That waves with the wave of the drowned; And I swear her cobweb gown's a shift Torn from where a broken window lay 50 Silent in the plundered town. Tired of seeing glittering things in the waste I lay my head with the rest. Blood runs from the torches; Mad hands demand mad eyes.
From the collection "Divine Revolt"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.