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Writer's pictureSpike Woods

CHIAROSCURO (1970)

I tried to get away from the twilight hills

But the sun in the West kept dragging me down

Over the rim of the altar’s sill,

Along to  the web of the silent town.


Running through streets where the roofs are heads,

Leering mouths and glass filled eyes;

Fountains of truth, your speeches are dead

And the wolves grow hungry as the sad day dies.


Up through the mud of the sky they go.

Stained with the blood in the leper’s bell,

Drinking the clapper in a shackling NO!

As the bubbles of love rise up to hell . .


‘Restless City’, you can hear them say

And even the mountain bows its head;

Black in the East where the golden rays

Never clasp, never even dare to shed


Lifelong colours on the darkness town

As the other half joyfully sacrifice;

The mountain waits. And the babble of sound

Makes a river of tears that are turned to ice.


Away in the grove in the valley’s crook

An altar tilts its shadow away;

A small snail crawls to a stony nook

And the deathless wait for another day.

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