The anatomy of broken dreams,
Scales that fall from eyes at last.
Cunning wind and cunning weft,
Scholar's pen, assassin's neck.
A cold wind through the dusty streets,
Silk-wrought mask and dusted hands,
Dig beneath the books of old,
Nothing garnered, all is sold.

Through the window, darkly, now,
The past is buried, shall not return.
City of miracles, city of death,
Every passing hour, each ringing bell,
To usher forth, and thus to tell,
Marble pieces on a cracking board.

And who shall thus be equal matched,
None, each player strangled, thus disposed.
The endless game, checkmate forbidden,
A Queen in handicap, the shadowed door.

Watches dimly through the window pane,
The silks and rags beneath, to and fro.
Fans and masks and silken, honeyed lies,
Mirrors that warp and bend and twist.
All become the player and her board,
But moves unmade, the game unending.

Thus before the chiming, lambent hour,
When suns are rising and sons to bed,
The orb that threatens the eastern sky,
And bloody, tears away at skin...
O what shall be - the player paces,
No pen to parchment, unchanging still.
And what led her here, an absent face?
Lover, lever, fulcrum steady hand?
Naught but shadows, lies and love.

Tea, the striking of the hour.
A maid, the turning of the quarter.
The half, her makeup, powder-fine,
Another, and her corset laced,
Anon, the temple, knife and noose.

To mummery, golden boards and ruby masks,
Silken lies and sweet-mouthed nothings.
Called in to worship and feed the flies,
Crawl like worms on a rotting corpse.
And she the Queen and she the Voice,
Honey, silk, and sanguine-shot mask,
Prayer and praise and empty words.

Never change, that stagnant board,
Nor grow nor learn, nor study still,
Equations unanswered, a bloody toll.
And far from here, and far from home,
The blue-lit candle, the silvered tome.