JOHN THE BAPTIST STEALS WORDS, PRAYS

"O Lord, hear my prayer,
and let my cry come to you.
. . . my bones burn like fire . . .
I am like a desert owl,
I have become like an owl
Among the ruins . . . ."
These remembered words quicken.

My heart is a hollow drum of deep echoes.
It pounds at my temples.
A bruised eye hangs in the sky,
Pitiless, blue.
I cannot look.
"My days are like a lengthening shadow,
and I wither like grass."

HEROD ON "STEALS WORDS, PRAYS"

Repent? What a laugh!
The past is finished, no longer exists.
There is only this moment now
(and the next one coming that I dread).

Who can redeem time?
Certainly not this rag and bone man.
The fish has long left the stream -
No one ever swims the same river twice.