hayden

by amaud jamal johnson from red summer

what did i know, what did i know
of gazing silences and terrored stone

brilliances; beauty of what's hardbitten
the auroral darkness which is god

then you arrived, meditative, ironic
my head gripped in bony vice

mouth of agony shaping a cry it cannot utter
what did i know, what did i know

of a changing permanence
the stains and dirty tools of struggle

weaving a wish and a weariness together
years before your time. years and years

i gaze through layered light
within the rock of the undiscovered suns

i see, i walk with you among
the landscape lush, metallic, flayed

behind us, beyond us now
the very sunlight here seems flammable