The Conservator Dreams

Stained-glass: a spider's web of cames and colour
brittle mosaics of the holy family;

suspended on my silks, I scuttled, penduled,
a hanged man dancing in a throat of song,

scraping the cancered frass from rotten mullions,
the clerestory, triforium and choir

light, dark and mystery surrounding me,
spinning slowly within my swirling sheets,

my dream-chaff clipped about my sleepless head,
as tears split the light—a thousand leaves

of bright grisaille rush past, their colour stripped,
kaleidoscopic, monochrome, exhaling

a turbulence of postage stamps awhirl
in frantic quest for tattered, unsent letters:

the dummy rings the chisel's striking tooth,
cutting back to stone that chimes the shank.

_______________________

David Alcock