Mark Sauer

The fang has formed the fawn, and red makes green
On meadow grass where blood distills to sap.
The world blooms from carrion soil, made clean
By vultures turned to blossoms. Maggots trap
...

If I am clay, seawater, and lightening
And nothing more - still the clay is thankful.
If guttering flame, dimming, brightening,
Snuffed to smoke - yet the wisp is grateful.
...

Longing, we listen, but the stars mock us.
The great silence enfolds us endlessly.
God's passing shadow lies cold upon us
Without the soft whisper of the prophecy.
...

The library at the end of the world -
Where once more poetry of dead tongues sings,
Risen from silence; where forgotten curled
Scrolls are cherished (for alone of all things
...

Mere pond scum slew the former world:
Some turquoise goo in fetid pools
By tepid wavelets slowly whirled;
Unnoticed and unlikely ghouls,
...

The arson ash of Troy besmears my hand;
My arm aches from pounding nails in a cross;
Bored, I stomp numbed feet as I stand
Watch over kapo Jews, whilst they toss
...

We will meet on the dead sea bed
The day time ends, beneath the ember
That was the sun, in the last red
Twilight, to touch lips and remember.
...

God made Adam. But Adam made Eden,
When his eyes opened to precipitate
From the infinite cloud the one garden.
All possibilities thronged at the gate
...

He paused the westward march of all the East
Near Sardis, to wonder at the beauty
Of a plane tree. As if a simple priest,
He hung with gold the emerald canopy
...

Last night, as softly as a spider flees,
A Passover of grim oblivion
Advanced inexorably by degrees
Due westward from the prime meridian.
...

Troy was a virgin wilderness,
The pyramids not yet conceived,
Atlantis yet unraised - much less
Deluged - when first that seedling leaved.
...

The gnawing lichen dissolve the mountains
In leisured nibbles of eternity.
When they rise at last from their long repast,
Who will have noticed the flicker of me?
...

When Love unblinds us, to see one true face,
One mask transparent to unclouded eyes,
And reveals by this solitary grace
The chosen one, though showing truth, Love lies.
...

When I have returned this breath I was loaned
By profligate stars and generous time,
Surrendered this flesh I rented, not owned,
This small usufruct of clay and of slime,
...

She dodges between the raindrops,
Lives between the ticking seconds,
Holds her breath when the soft breeze stops,
Only moves where shadow beckons.
...

The marble shall not weep for us
Nor will the moon remember man.
Aloof will float soft cumulous
Unseen in the stolid heaven,
...

Typhoons can hatch from a butterfly's egg.
Vast nations have sprung from a passing glance.
Innumerable rival futures beg
For a word; even silence can by chance
...

I want to know the Secret Name of Rome,
And the hue of pterodactyl pinion;
To stride the shore where Venus stepped from foam,
And the isle where Circe held dominion.
...

Israel atoned in an emptied room,
Bare, like that grotto one star did illume;
Once history hinged on a vacant tomb.
We kneel where once emptiness did loom
...

What gap in God is filled by me?
What lock to which I am the key?
What road am I a cobble on,
Wending to what destination?
...