Bruges

Winter’s afternoon,
Cold eerie fog suffuses the city,
Stone bridges over still canals,
Phantom spires and towers.
Loitering in the square
I explore geometry
With a cone of chips,
Dipping the slim hot crispy gold
In mayonnaise.
With this world in my head
I can never go lonely
Nor fall too far
From the tower of my voice.
I think of the left emanation,
The ten sephiroth of Satan,
Unholy and impure,
Unleashed when Judgment,
The fifth sphere,
Breaks away from the others
And turns destructive.
In the Groeningemuseum
I stand before Gerard David’s The Judgement of Cambyses:
The corrupt judge Sisamnes being flayed alive
With surgical precision by knaves,
While the Persian king and his court
Stand around, nonchalantly looking on.