Silent Paean

the lean verticle time narrows
windows of stained glass beneath
the transfixed lightning,
blue and momentary. A smile of starving
crystal lost in a glass,
eye . Puritan walls contain
bronze memories, this museum of marbled sky
polishing the fetid wood in the bones of chairs
beneath the parady of curtains breathing
a coffin in the statues of air,
cracking with the last church bell
my hymn.