Stone Cut

You show what none should see,
Like water spilling through your thin hands that someday will wrinkle,
You will, one day, press pennies into palms,
Press peonies into books,
You will become one of those old men.

You pray for what you cannot touch.
When you bow your head, the wind traces your hair
And reminds you of things you do not see
When pushing nose to cold church pews.

Your eyes were very blue,
Until long nights reading old books planted in them grains of greyness.
Then colour, that splendid she-devil, danced out of sight,
And you saw black, and you saw white,
Your own face plastered onto newspapers.

You could sleep on marble. You could sleep on nails.
Patience runs through your spidery veins and you bleed a kind of martyrdom
That leaks rivers in big stone halls.

Maybe when the clocks no longer need winding,
And every line in every face has been straightened,
You’ll fold your hands, and bow your head,
And psalms will drown you out, and the cold will reach your bones
And your face will become yet another judgmental dreamer,
Who peers between the tapestries
And stares through the stains in the glass.