The Birthday Ceremony
Seventeen rooms of long maroon
Tables, of endless
Raspberry cream cake,
Cheap California
Champagne, and stacks of magazines and childhood
Photographs
On the pale pink plush.
White as milk, and cold
As the hand of God,
That locked empire
With its slumber of ghosts, its dead
Engines. The uncanny
Always comes back. What white darkness: pearls,
Porcelain, and medicine.
The mansion of childhood
Is shattering.
A sentinel, I stand at the entrance
To the burning fortress.
