Bell Figure

(Somewhere in a northern clime it is snowing and a bell tolls)

 

   The metallic heart

of a care-free child bell-tongues night snow,

resonates / hums / remembers itself

in out-flowing liquid rings, like water remembering

the knife of a dead man’s dive,

an agony, mindless, unnamed.

 

     Though the playful bell tongue tolls ecstasy

melancholy rings the inner ear.

 

     The childlike tongue / heart chimes

and rhymes joy upon the knife-edged night

; upon the knife-edged night a metal-tongued heart

hammers and hums, hammers and hums

:    hammers and hums a lyric song

     hammers and nails a requiem.