Arts & Culture

Telling secrets in the secret places of the stairs: Fingertips, like lighted candles, reaching out, from the dark

(O my dove, thou art in the secret places of the stairs) reaching out from the clefts of the rock, from the secret places of the stairs; reaching out, going out, going dark in the secret places of the stairs. O daughters of Jerusalem, I am black but comely, like a tent at midnight with a lion crouching at its door, sniffing at its door, under a full moon in an empty sky on a black night of a blacker god who whispers secrets to the lost men giggling in the secret places of the stairs – the congregation of the lost men, the broken men, the men sans hair, sans teeth, sans everything. I cannot bear to keep them anymore, these secrets of the secret places of the stairs, nor dare I speak them even though you question me incessantly, “Speak! Why do you never speak?” I never speak because I lost my tongue where the dead men left their bones and the living pick at them. I dare not speak except to those who cannot hear, who have no ears to hear, but hide in fear among the secret places of the stairs, squatting in the dust and muttering their prayers to a black god in a blacker sky surrounding a dead moon on a still night in the secret places of the stairs.

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