# 7 Poem by B. Sven Telander

Walking quietly under skies of purple fire,
through whimsical forests, past windows of drab
abandonments, toward ever growing spire
as distance advances like a never peeled scab;
hiding squalor and sadness working in collusion,
where skirt of day has finished kissing dusk,
turning the night from paradise into a delusion
and all those proud things now empty husk

floating blind with innocents’ paper sword,
without pathway, recourse, or pleasant redress,
labyrinthine explorations without visible reward,
accountants charting vast debts that transgress;
after vaulting once more to apex of luminosity
returning back to earth seems an atrocity.