The dark came generously <br />with storm-troubled wings <br />The stars are all quelled <br />and the wind hangs purposelessly <br />There is a streak of verdigris <br />on the cicatrizing vault <br />A corolla of change dangles, <br />a shifting moon unfolds <br />and my imposition remained <br />a lackluster glacial metal <br /> <br />The weather was still as gold <br />and voracious as greedy kings <br />the crooked hands of the day <br />basked in luxurious rendezvous <br />Whilst I dreamed in hues of gray <br />weaving poems to the blasé moon <br />stitching the tatterdemalion tapestry <br />that mantled the ailing wounds <br />I found myself waiting <br />in front of a riddling mirror <br />with words unspoken off <br /> <br />If you knock, it will echo <br />If you burst, it will find tempo <br />My penetralium convalesced <br />nauseated from a peremptory vertigo <br />and my wallflower's petals <br />are paper-thin no more <br />thorns spangled its sleep <br />because it will never uncurl <br />under the searchlight's whim <br /> <br />I picked the felled letters <br />harried by the erratic gyration <br />of the ponderous atmosphere <br />I watched it turn to ash <br />as lips burned from their harangue <br />but the lions remain asleep <br />with the phantoms of their dens <br />and everything passed by <br />with deaf-mute miscalculations <br /> <br />To slur in the banquet <br />of manifold palettes <br />is a one-way ticket <br />for a subtle gargoyle <br />watching cold fountains <br />rise and fall, dance and topple <br />and on the gray clouds <br />lambently walk without <br />leaving scars and without <br />knotting prostate ties <br /> <br />Tonight, I rivet back <br />into the walls of my cathedral - <br />A pivoting turret that hisses <br />for the giant's intimidations.<br /><br />Norman Santos<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-drab-splendor-of-a-gargoyle/
