Blighter - Rome

Desert air on skin

The chill of empty space

The nomad’s grin

The sand, the wave and the cold

Will drive him back in

Will keep them close to him

And they will hide inside

Behind blind mirrors

Trembling in tents

Hearts weak with fear

He knows

He likes to keep them near

And at the night

With a pride too big to swallow

And with leprous hands

Has them hum and dance to him

For they have boiled his faith

Into abstraction

And coiled up in their sickrooms

Their bodies stir-stir-stirring in blankets

Like a mother’s withered breasts

They still set him to dreaming

Of quartering steel and of climbing fire

With a dripping honey hole

He’ll be winning them over

And with calculated neglect

He likes to know them there

And they will know

That they may only know

The laws of Things

Never their meaning

Only their laws

And they will bury their holy blade

Deep in devoted chests

And after such knowledge

What forgiveness?

Desert air on skin

The chill of empty space

The smell of emptied bodies

The sand, the wave and nothing

And nothing