The idiocies of our childhoods resurrect

as fantasies gathering on the shores

of death. If we stepped into a sealed train

it would not deliver us from the plague-filled town.

The fear which stood on wet verandahs once

gestures as a Bessarabian Ice-Cream Vendor

grinning behind his farting horse.

But welcome to Transfiguration.

You won’t arrive at Monsalvat unless

you’re on a lifetime’s pilgrimage. Brass

and clarinet are striding on the crutches

of chromaticism. Along the path down which

the dove descended, gruppetti turn their backs

on the Winter Landscape and enter Heaven.