Though I have yet to leave these fields of green, And daily rain has broke for bluest sky, I beg Mnemosyne for the vaccine To purge all that remains, to help untie
The images still lingering enclosed, For though these skies remain in cloudless form, Malignant misery awaits composed To flood the guarded gates by darkest storm,
A tempest called forth seeded by the most Perennial of memories that yield Not to the wishes of their tired host, And so I beg to drink and to be healed,
Still I do breathe but ask that she relent And baptize me to end this long lament
In one version it was just an old house a Victorian or Queen Anne decayed though, with weathered siding and dark broken windows In another version it was an institution a grey monolithic maze filled with dead ends and the diminishing shadows of caretakers I could never catch up to sliding down concrete walls Wardens or killers whose footsteps cracked on pine smelling linoleum shapes of people outlined by echoes And now I'm outside running from it then running to it A man on the roof looking away Something on the roof Nothing, no, nothing Then I'm inside again twisting down rickety spiral stairs to basements under basements and always a fireplace a cracked fireplace to walk past in fear There are people in this house There are muffled voices in this ward forever in the next room, in another room
