I also note that in a stroke of early ecumenical endeavour I moved beyond my usual Classical-Christian thought world and made a nod to the god, Shiva. The hymn, 'Lord of the Dance' was very popular at the time and may have had something to do with it. I cannot recall doing such a thing in any other of my poems. I wouldn't do it again: it's a question of where the truth lies.
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I sit at my window studying
My fingernails, their half-moons
As pale as morning mist. A dull unease
Inhabits the mocha light,
Issuing in newscasts and the death
Of Innocents. NovemberTakes hold, mulching the soil to a stony
Paste, killing each primary
Colour. Wrapped in a miasma of warm
Clothes and cigarette smoke I waitFor the New Year, content to doodle
With problems, ignoring the
Screams that infiltrate with the hissing wind. On
All Saints’ Day I thought of theCorpses collapsed in self-dug graves, their
Open eyes dishonoured by
Might stir myself, but the tepid air
In my lungs gasps at the effort,
Grateful for the grey, cold sleep of the
Year. If only a tinselInnocence would suffice, would redeem the brute
Facts of this world! But Man, born
In blood, always encounters the tough
Fabric of the universe, and hisOwn wayward temper, urging him to
Attack. When I focus my
Mind I see aggregates of atoms that
Issue in poisonous Saturn,A meteorite cluster or a
Falling tree, and vulnerable
Sniffing his way through the sciences,
Getting hurt time and again. But
Sometimes, deep in the flux of things, I
See the Dancing Lord Shiva,Dancing out his intricate patterns,
Bestowing consciousness with the
Somehow, our destiny is to dance as one
With the Lord of Life it will be
With the scars of experience etched on
Our skin, our hearts aching thatWe acquiesced in so many deaths. I
Am sleek and trim, fondling my
Between now and Christmas men will be shot,
The unjust will dab their lips with
A napkin, and each day the dusk will
Fall, incapable of caring.I sit on, swaddled in my comfort,
As vulnerable as a birth.