There is no summer, only the cold rage of music in stone ears.

I hear the muddy tread of tears, and I feel like murder all over again--
--under a ceiling of dull broken stars, their filaments gray and dead,
suspended from slack rafters of frayed strings--
--I feel like murder all over again,
like flaking blood in my eyelashes, like I have slept
in a red rain and washed myself with Shaol's sweat,
sweeping out dripping arms and opening my mouth
To spout blood with choruses of Oh Israel,
Oh God, have you borne me in your throbbing womb--
dissolving clay--to grind my bony face
Into the feeling of murder all over again,
to make me a murderer all over again.

The war drums do not beat,
they are the stretched skins of man shrieking
with ululations of terror and woe;
A wild-haired, starve-ribbed God throws out red limbs
and thunders There is no mercy only Red for you,
Red is the stain of your breath, Red is the blush of your shame.
I have no water only blood for you to drink,
I have no wine only blood for your drunken hours
between your dusken collapse and your dawn sorrow.

You have no exorcism, says the wild God.
You have only the barbs in your tongue and the poison in your ears.

sorry, says me. sorry I had only sorrow
and murder all over again. only chains
of jagged broken stars that once burned like the wild eyes
of a wild God, these are my light and my salvation,
my mossy, damp tomb. I'd lay you there with me,
but I haven't the courage for murder, only the feeling;
I've got the wet swimming of blood in the cradle of my jaw,
beneath my tongue,
and I feel like murder all over again.

We are not alive,
we are dead,
and that taste of salt and tears
is the blood sighing from dry veins.