I visited the village green
Where crystal visions can be seen
By you, or me, or any of us
Alighting from the crystal bus,
Whose chandelier glimmers as
The bus lets out a gust of gas.
And I recall, or think, or see,
A facet, individually,
A gla** in which there can be seen
A town, a mill, a village green.
And I recall, or think I do,
The shape of sunlight in the dew,
The curve of air, the crescent shapes
Of time that on our shoulders drapes.
And I let in, with cool eclat,
The rearing horse, the black sheep's “baa,”
Speeding on a web of neurons,
Thirty billion bright Lake Hurons,
Intra-spatial universe
Where holographic souls disperse
Purses quick as mercury
That flash their small infinity.
Ideas quickly oxidize.
Left on the shelf, they prove no prize.
Electrons whirling in the air
Are no respecters of them there.
Quantum shampoo in your hair
Will whisk your head most anywhere.
The worshipers will pray again,
Vague feelings will be flowing then,
The thoughts of upright, sturdy men.
But sometimes I just have a yen
To free the ocelot from his pen
To streak along the quiet pews,
Nuzzle elders, eat their shoes,
On the podium, wail the blues,
Declare and blare galactic news,
And if the beadle demands his dues,
Bare its teeth, leave pawprint clues.
We've entered into dusty climes
Repeated songs ten thousand times.
At forty-two or fifty-three,
We're dead as doornails, you and me,
Spinning like the hour hand,
Traversing this too-tired land,
Traveling to a tired heaven
Whose sour dough turns slowly leaven,
Bringing children after us,
Who'll also spin without a fuss
And disappear in the maw
Of vast, majestic sacred law
Or ride the breakers of old lore
That breaks upon a gritty shore,
As sermons we have heard before
Sedate us to our very core.
Dust filters slowly to the floor
And dulls the veins of raw, red ore.
On a higher frequency
Where nothing's what it's thought to be,
Where lead is gold and slaves are free,
And whispers exponentially
Expand and leap the garden gate
As in your breast they resonate,
The village green, now opalescent,
The chugging bus, turned iridescent,
The river, where the leaping plaice
Describe a curve in mystic space,
Where footsteps never leave a trace
Of where they led the merry chase,
We disembark and in the park
Wait until the sky turns dark
And feel the breathing, furtive, hot,
Of the panting ocelot,
And let the vision of our eyes
See oceans sink and mountains rise.
And where we go, our trembling hand
Awakens tremors on the land.