John and Salome

John and Salome The dancer bends each moment to her body, She splints each rigid second with her sway. She is present, She makes time's heart skip one, two beats, She asks for the head of prophet after prophet And recieves them. The future is not wanted here. The past crushes like grapes beneath her feet. The prophet wanders in the desert Where it is always high noon, And still, He sees his shadow looming towards the appointed hour. When it arrives, The hands will stop, His tongue will make a bell of his skull. They are long gone. His last meal is amber and insect in his stomach, And she feeds her atoms to children one by one. And the prophecy reaches me now, Two thousand years too late, Two thousand years too soon: A man will lie down in the middle of time, A man will cross-section the hours. The days , the years, pin down his hands, Pin down his feet.