The heart clatters down the street

The I sings within

Silence rises through the stormwater wells

The pipe organs stand mute
in gaping cathedrals
with ailing birds rustling
deep in silent shadows

St. Elmo's fire gasps in the synagogues of Lviv

The thought of God bleeds

Short lives maintain eternity

Desolation says Kaddish

Silence flows black and thick
through the towns,
enters everywhere,
overpowers uttered and said

Love is an insane lion
in the trapping pit of Samsara

Hurdy-gurdies, string harps
and key harps are encapsulated
in time constraints
like primeval insects in amber

Beethoven's Piano Sonatas cool off
like winding sea-weed
'round decaying corpses

The Well-Tempered Clavier erodes
in a rigid gesture
at the farthest reach of a blind shadow

Dimitri Shostakovich and Moishei Vainberg
wither in their names;
the crackling scores swarming
like confetti through big cities

The Torah is randomly opened
by faltering gusts of wind

Knock-about paragraphs teleprinter talk
to deaf days in closed sections of law

Shiny cars
with cooling hoods
stand poured on Manhattan
like delicious pralines
in random patterns,
cracked in intersections
with sweet, creamy blood leaking
out of the bodies,
while John Cage's and David Tudor's
Indeterminacy
chokes in a dying automobile radio
on 226 E 89 St

In Shiraz Rumi laughs inside the memories of forgotten ones

Thirst moves unimpeded around the colossi of hunger