POEM: Secret Places of the Stairs

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.