Altar's Light

By:

(This poem is dedicated to Diana Dinescu, a true friend)

Long time has passed for this old cell
Since anyone has entered.
Long ago did anyone set foot inside this holy place.

But is it truly holy, is it still like that?
It was one time, but that is gone,
Now there's nothing left, it's done.
Holiness has passed away.
Nothing left in here this day.

Or is it still like that this day?
Not still, but again it may.
Could this child below the arch,
Standing like a torch,
Bring light on the altar's porch,
Give the sacred back?

This may very well be true,
For as she stands there naked,
The sight of her is purest hue
Of beautiful untainted.

Slowly she walks into the cell
And looks around with grace,
But finds nothing to give her comfort,
The walls of darkblue suffocate her.

With each new step she takes,
She feels the stillness cornering her.
And her beautiful bare feet
Feel the aching, cold, dead stone.

It runs up her delicate legs
And fills her calves with unrest.
And from above, the lack of light
Kills her short, black hair's life.
And lower goes the darkness into her;
And her neck freezes, softness fleeing.
And higher goes the coldness into her;
And her womb is hot, desire fed.
And as they come together; cold and dark, merciless;
They find a point of halt; her heart is of the purest.

And so she does not stop,
But goes on to the altar.
Her feet are warmed by blood,
Dripping from the altar.
A pool of red on velvet stone,
A circle round the altar.
Coming from a long dead wolf,
Lying on the altar.

As she looks on, she feels a warmth
And cold and darkness fade from her.
It lies on one side, some ribs are showing,
Blood and flesh combined.
There is still some grey on it,
Despite the feeding roaches.
One eye is white and dead, with nothing in it dear.
And the other's hanging from a loose ocular muscle.

Flies and moths and other insects
Fly around and joke about
The once great wolf so old and grey
Is nothing, but a corpse, a rusty ash-tray.

At this site she falls on knees, and they too get wet,
In the blood of the dead wolf, and something more than that.
For she with her crystal eyes looks onto the corpse,
And from these melted, warmful gems of brown a river falls.
Not a rain, but tears come down into the pool of blood,
And not only tears of eyes, but other fluids as well.
Her heart starts beating with a warm rime, and her womb feels strange,
And her entire body came under a spell.

She puts a hand on the sack, which was once a lung,
And gently moves her cheeks to caress the wolf's face.
Her other hand goes down, to caress herself,
And with a mournful whisper she utters in distress
"Father!"

She let's go, and everything around her seems to change
And so she takes a dagger and points it to her throat.
The blood slowly flows along the edge of the white blade,
And mixes with the endless flow of tears running wildly.
The corpse just looks on and doesn't mind,
Gazes with a clean white eye, dead and cold as night,
And one covered in burning red, a lighthouse of blood.
She puts the blade (it disappears) and looks at the dead wolf
And it smiles, happy to know that she has changed her choice.

And he whispers "It's good to know
There is good afterall! Your heart is grey!"
And hearing that her soul breaks open
And she leaves this worlds,
Tainted not by false idols, but by promises of dreams.

(The altar stands there, the wolf's still dead…
The cell is still there, no change in that…
The floor still cold, the ceiling dark…
But all is lit with dreams of heart!)