Dedication
Is this a reliquary, or some other
arcane and ill-touched altar
in which a shard of centuries’-
saved blood has begun
to slosh once more against its walls, beguiled
by faraway and logorrheic
chants, to reliquefy? Is this
the housing of some
prayed-to thing
that cannot but go slithering
always past our hard, congealing stare?
Lay jewels, then: embed
ebony and bloodstone in this
tiny, hardly seen, and unbudged door.
