How This Sadness Came To Be Persistent

by Rudolf Abbe

The traceries were often beautiful.
But rendered on the Gnostic frieze they bore
Annihilated circumambulations,
Deliberate treacheries; from which stone of shore

The face of a wall soared up; up, infinite --
Signing the thicket signature of time,
Whose finger is a fire and whose eye
Proved serpentine as arrows.
                                                                That is when
The heaps of stones collected into cities;
Why the confessors and the hangmen faltered;
How this sadness came to be persistent.

Listen. The siren-calls. The thorns, the root:
Whose pale eviscerations since the Gothic
Well overawe a flesh now turned to splinters
Devoid of heldentenors;
Asymmetries of angels;
A falsity of waters
For which no one dare answer.

And on the eve a thunder stammers slowly;
And round the tall cool marble Nike shimmers
Chryselephantine darkness;
Scar of logos.