As clear as wings

The air is as clear as wings, and my lungs expand like balloons. I steal up my stonily empty boulevarde with the concrete statues as my only witness, and their eyes blinded, or wounded -

and nobody sees me creep to Saint Xavier's. Up to the top of the church I climb. My cat-limbs are happy, elastic, ascending the verticals; from the bloodied spire I dangle, one arm waving, daring the pavement to rise up and get me. Here is the church, and I swing from the steeple; there is the city, but where are the people?

I am high on my monumental monkey bar, holy of holies I'm happy, I'm purring, I'm rubbing my head on a pillow of stone -

"But you're still no closer to the stars," snaps the gargoyle, "and what have you brung me for food?"

"Brought," I say softly, "I've brought what i ought," and I lay down for him an offering, half wooden, half stone -

"Petrified," says the gargoyle, his stone lips not yet used to speech,

and I say, "Don't be," and smooth his stone brow with all tenderness, and try to blow the smithereens away from his blind, stone eyes.