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THE SHIPS
(“Can ships safely sail the quicksands?” Seneca.)
I. My words are my life, my life the words I write,
all to be destroyed every night only to be created
every day, memories and thoughts, hopes and all
our myriad despairs and I despair even as I measure
lifetimes in pens and pen strokes, and blank faces all
innumerable in the crowds.
II. Survival is in the eye of the beholder and I survive
even as I die with my eyes open to see things that have
not been as the shadow-ambered pool drowns the very
seconds smooth and indistinct.
III. And in my words I have been written down and the
mirror that reflects all things seen and all things unseen
reveals met not at all, not even once showing me to
myself. Grim and tasteless words they were, grim and
tasteless words to lead them on with a song or pass
along without a song to my very name and a cold
hatred as it burns the world to ash burns me also, til I
learn a scrap of words, a scattering of less than songs.
IV. And they cut into one another’s flesh by speaking
words of love to something other than they are, or to
nothing at all.
And we take it up those wearied thoughts all worn
smooth and indistinct for the fear’s worse than the pain,
the fear of having nothing left
to hope for and nothing left to do like the
dreams of statues frozen in the moment of a loss.
V. And this sinister design is surely blind as one despair
is furthered by another and much as one good day in a
lifetime of sorrows grates like very rough scales of bark
and ashes I am caught surrendering to the throne of the
mountain king whose mountain is made of thoughts I
have not made.
VI. We gather the sum of all good days to obliterate a moment
of sorrows then turn and march again, pressed and folded men all
in a row, til then they are no more. And this secret behind
my demoned eyes never truly leaves me amid the milk
softness of days and nights, for everything that is has its
opposite, even that which does not exist and we are
defined by our opposites in a country where change is not,
even that which never was for half of all we are exists in the
shadows of thoughts and moments lost in the midst of all but
that which might have saved us at least, or most of all.
VII. Where your beginnings are I am and where your ending
is I have already been for everything that has a beginnings
must inevitably have an end, only to begin again and all things
are then eternally renewed, and the boundaries of order
and the boundaries of chaos are one and the same I find.
VIII. When I am old and my sins are old across two worlds I’ll travel,
when I young and my sins are young across two worlds I will have
traveled. All existence is caught suspended like amber in a
jewel-ambered eye, a jewel eyed fly regarding all while
comprehending nothing at all, the last insect left barren and
alone though never realizing, no not once that she is barren and
eternally alone.
IX. And she has no eye for beauty like the night, a crimson dye
about her obsidian brightened eyes while the wind caught her like
a string of sand then wind threw her fitfully away again,
scattering her across the garden ground of edens no human foot
has trod upon and no human foot now ever will, and still the thirsting
lands cry for water nor never fire no matter how near the fires truly be.
X. The ghost who beckons me is not death though surely she must be
some other ruined thing and still I clutch after her where God has
walked eternally alone, delicate bones in the leg broken
neath the shadow of an alien, unseen wing, and the songs, broken
jeweled songs of a woman with a crimson dye about her obsidian
brightened eyes as delicate legs in the bone are broken
by their reflections cast against a world alien to our singular
understandings. It is a private little genocide of my very own
to kill myself by populating the worlds with children unconceived,
lovers never met, enemies never breathed to being, or friends never
introduced as anything but strangers, lost faces lost amid the crowds
in cities cast like strands on the tapestries of unremembered dreams. June 1-14/11.
WATER LONELINESS WAXCHILD OF MINE
Water loneliness waxchild of mine like the rain witch in her
autumn town surrounded by an autumn land of lost, perpetual
memories turning upon the scent of hot milk weed wine
as the peacock kingdom is shed for a moment’s passing time with
neither memories nor dream nor reality to climb upon our backs
and wear smooth our thoughts as glass in autumn climes.
And people made of paper fear all kinds of weather as a bronze
chess piece and his bride slouch toward the red pyramid of Xauljiria
and the Trickster of Trahlure, that old jester plays chess
against Yiyi the spider with his king and queen lost upon a
sandship leading outward where the lords of shadows gather with
the lords of iron, where the princes of Mars retire neath the watching
eyes of Saturn’s lusting queens and the crimson ruins of rust
sheltered by the rain witch in her autumn town as the pyramid
slips away, sold to stranger hands which have held eternity and more,
and long still for the same.
And a sarsparilla strahman smokes his pipe of human bones and
watches as the summer lands unfold outward like a plague that
has no lasting name. June 3/11.
THE INFINITY MACHINE
The infinity machine is a machine so old no one
knows who built it or from whence it came
and of all the things that I was thinking,
that my life were once a shame fade from me
for I have this task to labour for, this truth to find. Now
no matter if I triumph my life’s the triumph that I find. June 7-16/11.
MOMENTS IN TIME
We create moments in time that never were,
imagine possibilities unexplored til a
single life becomes a labyrinth of meanings,
of twenty trillion paths leading forever
forward and back, crossing against itself til
one man become the sum of all ideals and all
depravities in the self same breath.
Sheltered in the shadowed expanses of the moon,
sun and stars man is alone neath the iron wrinkled
sky and the doors of Egypt thrown wide again
divulge but hourglasses, nor can they once reveal
a waiting second lost in sacrifice on the lips of
desolate men lost in the sacrifice of a no man’s land
between all possible hopes and all despairs.
And again and again the ghosts of our own futures
scream at us, shout “go some other way, all you
have done must lead to ruin as I’ve seen it now,
in the future as yet unwritten, unseen or unremembered.”
And every time a new path we take there is again the
scream that will not stop because all paths are equally
cursed, but still the future still unsatisfied, copper-brittle
thoughts mired like the symphony of the guns, for I am gone,
never to return. So go home and be unsatisfied
by all punishments disproportionate to their crimes lest we
change our lives and repent upon the justice done to us.
Relax your arms and see who your legs will carry, what
kind of man you’ll be without the cold comfort
of another man’s gun. For we lose ourselves not in the
labyrinth but the sheer, sure logic of each step perfectly
in place, while the future regards us all without a trace
of anything but scorn. Let the future scream,
and be as you were born. June 3/11.
THE OVERLORDS
1903 and Calthira sits, she sits and her name is caught on the wind,
Calthiran names gathered to gall; Calthirana I have also heard her
called.
And the Overlords from out of time clutch after her but cannot find
a single strand of days or nights she has spent between their borderlands
and Azarana that old spider weaves her burial shroud for wars as yet
unwaged and now are but the shadows of grimmer fates as yet unseen
and unobserved.
At Candle-mere, at the lamp lit time Calthira with her lustful eyes,
her savage mouth, her sister’s life and hers trapped in the self same breath
together beneath the skin and there upon the church’s step she mocks the
sentiments of lesser men by having them all look to her nor ever
think of Him. And the minister to cry and weep for Baaltheroph where
the temple of Nurygz led slaughtered enfants all to be so slaughtered,
but never once are the voices heard to weep for my son amid the wars
and I don’t know why, I’ll never now why Calthira is still alive nor the
Overlords dare take her out of time no matter how hard they try.
And I received the letter today and my son has a wife, a girl named Tleyela
from the province where he was stationed and I tear the letter up, try to
forget the shame, then wonder again, oh how I wonder in this world who’s to blame?
June 3-9/11.
I FLIPPED MY CAR IN TENNESSEE (Title by Nate Guimond May 28/11.)
The crimson fair is over now and I to homeward tread.
I rest my head too soon and the car slides from my grasp.
In a tearless haunted sleep I feel away and lost all sense
of where I was, or where I had been. In the afternoon
quiet of the midnight worlds
alien and strange this life of mine becomes as the true
language of hell I find written on the bones of hills and men.
Yet invisible I could not know from whence I came and
death but death plays no favourites I find. It is an equitable
trade I think to haphazardly lose a life once gained by letting
slip the wakeful hours on a road homeward bound in any
case, in any case I’ve found. June 5-6/11.
BEYOND THE PALE OF OTHER HUMAN BEINGS
Beyond the pale of other human beings but the sad brief
games of demons in mockery of themselves, a hell not
of their choosing or a heaven equaled of all they ever were.
I’ve got to race against the sun sometimes I fear and let my
lips brush against my fingertips the choices that they bear,
else I am naked as the worlds upon the page, naked as the ink
dried and twisted to a shape it did not intent to make. June 7-16/11.
WHAT SHE TOUCHES
What she touches she destroys and so
she kisses me, and the earth cares not
who owns it.
Rule governed all things are lost in the
seeming nothingness of the night.
Rule governed even society is destroyed
and in its wreckage all things returns from
whence they came.
And the greatest revenge is to live well, even
when dead, especially when dead, and the earth
cares not who owns it.
And which the worse conceit, to watch the fools
in all their ruin or shut all eyes to ignore them,
as if they never were?
Eternally caught is night’s child and what she
touches she must inevitably destroy even as she
kisses me and I am lost
in the seeming nothingness of the day,
but not the night, lost in obscurity. June 7-16/11.
EYES ALIVE WITH SUCH LONGINGS AND SUCH HATE
Eyes alive with such longings and such hate as no man can describe,
empty of all meaning in the end and every day the same I find again.
Worn smooth by the very centuries themselves a single smile becomes
a mockery of stone or a soft word broken to coral splinterings.
Soft and hard and light and dark, shifting and shimmering like water
in a pool memories turn upon themselves til all that remains are eyes
longing for all but that they cannot see again, except in shame. June 8-9/11.
THE BEST THING I CAN DO
The best thing I can do is leave you are you are
rather than to interfere at all and make you into
something you are not.
A man I knew made a private little holocaust
of his very own and I could not stop him in the
ruin of his family and you I cannot
stop, either, in the ruin of yourself, yet you will
endure and with you I will go, memories of myself.
To drink your beauty up and swallow it down and
take it down into myself and never breath a word
that you were found; such things I hope
for in my dreams.
I’ve shifted my weight from off my shoulders
finally in the end, weight of all your love and all your
longing for someone else. There is a loss of being
when we are someone other than we should
have been, a satire of misspent mockeries
wasted in the knowledge imperfectly reached that
we are not now what once we might have strived to be.
I can despair of all I’ve done yet never despair of
you. Harsh laughter, harsher smile is all that
you’ve rewarded me. June 7/11.
A WAR OF SHADOWED SQUARES AND LIGHT
There is a war of shadowed squares and light, a war
of absurdities, a satire and a mockery of all that
we’ve achieved
and it is a satire of manners, hopes
and fears where shadows too they must of course be
claimed or take of us a portion of
ourselves.
A layer of light upon the upper parts of
trees and the lower part awash in darkness dreaming
and yet the foundation gleams and burns
even of night
which must ever support the pillars of the day.
Stirring like serpents in the shadows, writing in their
circular-crimson ways, but we are all the same I find;
we are all the same.
And the sage resolving secret
things shall find his answer cast back at him, oh the myriad
of those secret things! Razor fine blades
of hands and eyes
nor cell adorned with
strange and varied mysteries shall keep us from the reflections,
the naked reflections of ourselves,
the least of which is
knowing what we are,
and she has gone again into these secret days, the serpent mother
of all mankind, shadow-mother of dawn’s last smile, all too
soon consumed in ice.
And all shattered upon the grass is a wayward humanity
lost alone even in the company of twenty billion souls and
we are all strangers
even unto ourselves.
Existence is composed of sand sculptures decomposing
by the ruins of dying suns in countries of lost daylight, ruined
without a single sound. June 6/11.
PIECE OF METAL
Piece of metal caught in the reach, those slender
fingers of time, like a man of brier thorns,
like the scent of roses dying, like the pyres of shadows
upon the edges of the magic, serpent magic when feet
don’t touch the ground; oh what a terrifying world
to be so trapped from!
I think like a spider burning in the gardens of the night
in the city of swamps, in the mire and the slowly
rotting towers all collapsing in the searching of a name.
In love’s laboured requiem some lust after gold, some
after fame, some after all that is denied them. In Jajis
Dalijia, in the obsidian gardens of Ro-Shalijajis the
shadows stopped to die, lying naked upon the dawn, in
Jajis Dalijia where I have also gone to finally die.
In the shadowed deserts of Waligydia women, their flesh
of amethyst retire against obelisks made of human bones.
Beside an ocean all of amethyst I shall take no
stock of my feelings anymore to know, for yet to know
an obelisk of human bones lies buried neath the sands of
jewels which were once women but none realize it now.
Shall I forgive the earth for being such, being the
dust of souls, the dust of lives, or echoes of worlds
before, obliterated in the fires of dying suns? What
obsession takes me now to know, to hope I can forgive
myself at last of all my failings, corners never righted,
minds never ordered, thoughts never cleansed of humanness
or wantonness or want. And who am I to know of God, of
law, of anything at all, standing beside an ocean
all of amethyst, each of those I loved or those I’d
known who know me not, or perhaps they never did. And
what revenge is this to never know the acts we imagine
committing and later will forget because we fear an act
undone, leading outward to the sum of all other actions
in their turn. Imagine a family wracked by tragedy lashing out
against another kith and kin, two strands devoted lovingly
to the misery of each other and imagine now a single
life so spent upon its self same ends, to end itself in
ruin, so lovingly. What is revenge or obsession or the
thoughts cast haphazardly on the ground that life is not,
simply that life is not as we are forced eternally to drown. June 4-5/11.
TWENTY WAKA BY M. DAJABI
(A French Canadian from the 1850s.)
1) A weasel crept on
the path and challenging my
patience would not
leave. I play Ayljan to pass
the time now when you are here.
2) You are gone away
from me Shaystra looking glass,
crimson gaze and crimson
haired, lover of my
son, how I wish you never were,
so he would grieve you not.
3) A flower blooms and
pushing thru the street
up-heaves all thoughts of
a secure, unchanging world. How
I hate you.
4) Hands were never clean
when touching her, but he now
simply will not stop
and I cannot make her leave.
I feel defiled by her being here.
5) A fire burning in
the middle of the night and
the duty of the fire
is to cleanse my son of thoughts
for her, sound of her voice.
6) Alylijha, her
daughter so lovely, her one
daughter too lovely;
why can’t she go away, why
can’t everyone leave us be?
7) And now my son is
gone away; I don’t know why.
Haven’t I proved they
love you not? Don’t leave me all
alone. Who am I without you?
8) Rough hewn Xalul has
taken off, my lesser son
is also gone so
I haven’t even a replacement
for the good one that I had.
9) Drowning in smoke I
remember Shahadria,
princess of bright water,
how I wanted her to want my
boy; what a boon for me!
10) I’ll take my vows, go
to some monastery, surely that
will prove I’m right to
them. If I am righteous still
they’ll have to agree with me.
11) I’m going on the road
to Tharazaria so
that I can ask alms
from the poor. At the place of
infinite sorrow I’ll make my
sorrows more.
12) All upon the road now
regard me with pity; I
can’t see why I’d pity
anyone and Shanlia
is smiling now at me; I don’t know why.
13) Sliding toward some
mediocrity I imagine
I was a better
mother or they were better sons
or I had no sons at all.
14) Shanlia the nun
keeps whispering now
to me upon the road
I haven’t traveled before;
what is she always saying?
15) My sons sends a hand
written letter; they will be
wed despite my best
intentions. How can he
break a mother’s heart?
16) They love you not, they’ll
always love you not even
as I love you not for
dare betraying me by
loving someone I do not approve of.
17) She dies, they die out
upon the sands, or so I dream
at times when I’m alone.
And they should know I love
them all the most by hiding my
face from theirs. And from their ghosts.
18) Jaljisakua
that old liar has said
and I have heard it so
my boys are gone into the
pyre; that they are dead
and I’m alone.
19) I’ll grieve them not
but that I’m now alone.
I had two sons I loved
but they loved life more.
Upon the road I call out to them.
20) In Zalraganix,
city by the emerald sea,
city of coral I saw
my boys, wanted to cry out,
couldn’t; they’d always been
lost to me. June 3-9/11.
STUMBLED BACKWARD ONTO GREATNESS
We stumbled backward onto greatness as
a grenade, a private little holocaust of meaning
worn smooth as the hourglass I think and empty
all of a name.
On lapping seas of silken wine an obsidian
sharpness clinging to it, the scent of bitter vines.
Serpent blind, no scarlet blind all existence
is caught suspended in the moment of eternity and
then snuffed out before it ever was.
Into a sunken pool all of light man shall dwell
in the house of God forever and ever and curse
the thought of such an ignoble fate.
And the magic of the place is all undone and ruined
now I fear, the magic of the place be lost, that
place we all have gone to before we were ever born. June 9/11.
I SAW SOMETHING
I saw something but I’m not exactly sure what it is
I saw, the moth devouring time, the king of the moths
and the summerlands take hold again I fear,
all green vales like ribbons running round the
edges of the circular wheel of time as the spokes
run themselves forward into me and I am impaled
upon what I have seen, but I can never
tell what it is that I have seen. June 9/11.
A LEGEND SELDOM TOLD
It is a legend seldom told til now
that Soketh, that priest of a vanished faith
left behind the tokens of his love for all the
gods which he had named by cutting himself
apart and leaving him scattered as pieces,
echoes or words upon the wind and sky and air.
Thus it was that language was first born.
Thus it was that profanity followed after. June 9/11.
CALTHURA REVISITED (Pronounced
either “Calthira” or “Calthura.”)
And the muck and mire are gathered round
and the earth is breathing softly without a
single sound and the mirror smooth faces
gather, always gather and with their songs
invisible and barely heard they tell of worlds
undone and ruined and redone again as
Gates are opened to be closed and universes
cut off from one another til even a single
song becomes the legacy and impetus of twelve
times a trillion lost mythologies. June 11/11.
THE TOWERS BASALT ON THE STEPPES
OF VOIENAR (Also known as Vohenar.)
The towers basalt on the steppes of Voienar
and there on their thrones sit the wasp wings
green, malachite green or sometimes gold,
and all becomes a predatory design, the final
embrace of predators throwing themselves
against the walls of time and bruising
themselves upon the stone-ward glances.
And then the world is lost in fire and in fire
we both must drown, burning and drowning
all at the same time as the black continents
grow outward like crystal or arms longing for
a lover’s touch and the seas freeze fast, seas
of acid frozen and upon the haunted sand ship,
the burnished spider ship they are hunting all
the same, hunting for the wasp kings upon their
thrones of human sins and beyond the unseeing
edges of our sight a Stranger walks nor stops but
to gather up the predators and lay the predators
down as toys might be so placed in a cage
un-glimpsed by any til the lens of perceptions
are altered and opened wide, as in fire they drown. June 11/11.
THE SHIPS OF VORNAS
And the violet clouds lie scattered and the ships of
Vornas come and the gas giant, the vast sleeping
world notices not the children steeped upon it,
noticing not the violet skinned riders of air and wind
with their four wings, four slender arms, their black
obsidian eyes nor their duels with blades of bone,
and still the wind rushes on heedlessly into night
and still the riders come and blackly dance til even
the clouds vanish without a sound, and left in the void
the ships race on, hungry for less even than a name. June 11/11.
PUNISHMENT
Can one be finitely punished for an infinite crime,
can an infinite act of vengeance, an infinite genocide
be rewarded by a time bordered on one side with an
end even to the crimes one’s made, even as those
crimes infinitely cascade and rob the universe of
some perfection taken in the actions of a single one?
And if he gave us hope and then took that hope away
would that count as a crime infinite in scope, or if
perhaps he murdered all those that we loved? The
question is not of hell my friends. The question is of
forgiveness for all crimes are infinite in their scope,
all actions reverberate down the corridors of eternity.
All that truly matters is if you can lay your griefs down
and place a border ‘pon yourself that you may live again. June 11/11.
MASNAVI
On the isle of Taliz the grasses flow and mingle with the
shadows and gold stands alone, witness to the murder
of opal and obsidian.
And Cahtnir, gentle Cahetnir, what shall become of you?
Kehleyra loves you not even as she loves herself.
Xalajhis is murdered upon the grass, a blade within her
grasp, yet no wound upon her body save hollow, vacant eyes.
And what of Enyrhadou, what of the executioner of Myhren?
He trembled and he fell even before the guillotine.
Ariadne is dancing to a lapwing’s song and Tjsatus looks
on lustfully, even as the girl’s blind still she so looks on.
Alijhas Gonjal has painted the isle of Taliz and there she
sits, a silent witness to the carnage of the grasses murdering
even the stones themselves. June 11/11.
AT NETHER-MERE, AT NETHER-MERA
At Nether-Mere, at Nether-Mera an incomplete anger
gripped me and I beheld the towns all dissolve away
and in a malachite coloured suit the bankers all went
to gather up their wealth in all their counting houses,
the forests all stooped low to gather all their tresses and
the love-lost women gathered up their beauty lying
upon the eyes of older men. Yes the towns are all
dissolved my friend at Nether-Mere, at Nether-Mera,
and Caleb Wintersong is all dissolved with them. June 11/11.
IF IT’S ALIVE
If it’s alive I can kill it,
if it’s dead I can make it worse
but against the laws and mores
of men what chance have
I? Even a barbarian is civilized
compared to the likes of them. June 11/11.
PASSENGER TO HELL
Passenger to hell,
passenger to oblivion,
passenger to all heavens
all unnamed at least.
A machine has caught
a child, lonely as a child,
the machine has sought
to find their pain together;
each other’s flesh they knot
together,
passengers to hell,
passengers to oblivion,
passengers to all heavens
all unnamed at least. June 11/11.
IMMIGRANTS
And Ixalthranis
came from Zelganix, came to
the fields of Canada, an alien
and an immigrant.
And asking why the trees
did not shimmer crystalline
it was explained
that trees here were
not made all of diamond flesh,
and no they never sang in
the rain either.
But they sounded good all
the same, rustling and sighing,
and I explained
that’s
the sound we all make far
from home, which he was making. June 11/11.
PLANETARY ROMANCE
Send the Harvesters down,
all block-like and grey,
to take a few specimens up, but
the Harvesters never come back.
Send the Dominators down,
all guns and spines of teeth,
to take a world for us. But they
shall never return again.
Send the men down; no,
never send them down. All
lush trees and forests, men given
such a luxury is this after centuries
on ships in boxes grey as corpses.
No, leave the planet all alone.
We’ll claim another one instead. June 11/11.
AND WHAT IF THE QUEENS REBELLED?
And what if the queens
rebelled, the boards all
undone, knights and
bishops run and kings
make their allegiances
with their shadows? Whose
to say the victor in a war of
sexes where sex is not,
just a satire of manners with
an audience of giants mutely
staring on and peering down. June 11-13/11.
XALALIA
Nerh and Ner’iha at the city of Xalalia,
duelists, with their pistols drawn and
all their bullets fired.
And the serpent-crow
perches on Xalilulix’s shoulder and
makes a wager that none shall win
or be the victors on the ramparts
of Xalalia, stone towers in their
seas of dust carved of human
hands and bones and thighs. June 11/11.
BLUNT ANIMAL COARSENESS
Blunt animal coarseness,
the mantids curl and
worship in their sleep,
the war in Willow’s Square
undone, peace restored but
only in dreams, as the mantids
curl in worship as they sleep. June 11/11.
ALL BLOOD DRENCHED ON
A SOLITARY GROUND
All blood drenched on a solitary ground
and God was silent all the while.
All solitary on a blood soaked
ground upon the road I have not traveled
on. I had two sons and now I have none,
I saw my dead boys upon the streets
as if alive and turned my face from
them. And God was silent all the while
and the footsteps showed that He had stopped
upon the road and would not walk again. June 15/11.
CLEAR GLASS SEAS OF AMETHYST
Clear glass seas of amethyst and
waxen wings of glass my lover wore.
Gripping the ground with feet too
bruised to stand and I a man of glass
imagine that we are all the serpent born.
Loved and yet unwanted Neksis feels, and
the air’s so clean you can never see
it properly; she drives me to the ground.
Death taken out of the world flies away as
my lover flies away, without a sound. June 15-16/11.
NALDYEH
I was raised on your exploits Naldyeh,
that you battled the warrior Le Shu
at the ravine of Duaghern,
that you set your ship to sail to
the silvered moon itself or even beyond
to the malachite-obsidian drenched world,
which is but a stepping stone to the
Paradise you were about to step upon.
But remember Ahalya her husband turned
to stone; sometimes the worse punishment
is no punishment at all.
Do not step to Paradise and
leave me with but your exploits. June 15/11.
CURSE OF THE SCORPION WOMAN
The difference between chance and incompetence
is when you accidently step upon a scorpion in the
dark as opposed to
slapping the face of
the scorpion woman as she is about to utter a curse
upon you, the woman who already doesn’t like you
very much. June 15-16/11.
A LUC BATH (A style of Vietnamese poetry.)
And whose to say an end
for me has come, a bend upon
the road broken still, gone
forever as I am thrown down to
the fate of one life so
that I may go into my one
path, one way, one now gone
never to return, become some new
person, some new man, thru
some miracle she knew, woman
become what she wanted when she began. June 15/11.
THE ENFIELD (A heraldic beast.)
The shadow-shrouded sea and the
Enfield with her lupine tail sweeps
down the stars,
her eagle claws catch
up the very scatterings of days and
dawns, and in the mask
of Reynard
she gazes cunningly on the machineries
of Creation haphazardly cast about.
No wonder the old bards dared
not sing of her; who were they to
her but echoes of herself? June 15-16/11.
THE LOVER’S PLOT (“And
hatred keeps their alive.”)
And the lover’s plot and the wife is killed,
but afterward, ah afterwards? And what
happens then; a marriage, seeing each other
sick with the flu, children, maybe children?
Never dismiss hatred as a motive for love.
Had the lovers never killed her I doubt they
ever would have separated as they have now. June 16/11.
WITHIN THE CONFINES OF THE DAY
Within the confines of the day, of
a single day at least many paths are
opened, til night closes all the doors. June 16/11.
THE SOLDIER’S SOUL
Brink on the edge of nothingness; still
he presses on. And the obsessive eye
is surely, terminally blind, the eye which
can never see the battle’s lost. And he
slows and stops and dies; the soldier’s
soul. I wouldn’t have it any other
way for him. Awbray has what he wanted
most. And me, I have the revenge of seeing
him. June 16/11.
THE DESERT MOON ATOLL
The desert moon atoll: I look upwards and see
the sands peer down at me, mock my pretensions
of being less than sand.
I look about me at
the streets, the faces all innumerable in the crowd;
imagine it a desert and I am gazing
past the ground, upward to the skies
where I have not yet been found. June 16/11.
ROSALIE
(The following poem is composed of the best lines
from the poems of Eric Mackay Yeoman, a Maritime
writer born 1885, died 1909.)
1) Rude monuments of Chaos from whose sides
tinged far away with gloomy amethyst gush snowy
streams whose foaming liquors roar to gaping
caverns full of night and
pour to verdant plains afar in pearly mist. This is
my universe and my frail heart is center of it where
ghostly morn-mists flee chartless, pursuing wraiths
of reality, a luring void.
I stand upon the edges of eternity.
2) Would you be fairer set in pomp of thrones,
form adorned with wealth of cunning lands?
Purple from Chios decked with Indian stones
graven by deft Egyptian hands or thy brown
head crowned with gold the savage sifts from
desert sands where the Gryphon dwells,
hands enriched with gifts of Arab perfumes in
Red Sea shells in woodland guise, blue gaze on
the west a lily flower in my hand, upon thy breast.
3) Where in the kingdoms of wan
flowers the rich verdure hides its
wealth against the creeping shadows’
stealth as a cloud comes wandering from
the west stolen from magicians of the
skies, its magic smokes of violet hues burst
to violent gold chased with lost forms and
vanished eyes I found some potent witchery
from all the wealth of perished days.
4) Cold-plundered Earth delight her
bowers fashioned of milk and faint
vermillion’s blush and chosen scent find
sustenance in my eyes thru all the green
haunts of the stately wold where the simple
heavens descend shrill riotous with winged
things’ harmonies, til I alone commune
with miseries. And Spring’s straying odours
sicken all my sense to a narcotic chaos of
despair, songs frantic with ecstatic care;
my heart is weeping-ripe in me chilled to
a withered thing by sorrow’s frost.
5) From bright palaces beyond the west
earthward with quiet splendor spread on
high from far stations in the dusky sky
and a seraph band of friends she lost and
mourned. Do snowy angels haunt thy
crimson halls, lingering from their lands
of long delight, looking purely to the rosen
sky to smile again with thoughts of destiny?
Rapturing the world entrancing flowers
sprang like lips all ruby-dye that dwell within
our native air unseen beneath whose graces lie
the beds of forms gone into dust and death
which blend with the faint west-wind’s sigh
a dirge for life that perishes unseen. Sing a
requiem instead for the laughter of
children, crooning mothers and the
love-hushed tone of red-lipped lovers.
6) And spread my feast of soft tranquility,
a promise of abiding rest and this shall tell
the fable of my days, the fabric mingling of
joy and anguish in kingdoms that were
but vanities to spoil and overthrow amidst
the wreckage of their themes that life is but
the ruins of our dreams. So fade, fade
wan flowers in the dusk cold shades! The
world was fair in perished hours. And some
earths blighted were, some were stolen away
by angels gathering for their paradise and
some we nourished not no more to shine upon
our voided eyes like faint frail flowers that are
the night-wind’s prey, to grace rich bournes with
all your soft delight. Fair things ne’er perish though
their wanderings be far and strange; and you were fair.
7) On the lofty loveliness that lies
in high sweetness of thy fragile grace,
in the pale blue beauty of thy guise,
thy shape and painting all so delicate;
or like a desert-girt oasal bower or
chemeric angels out of Paradise some
new-known wisdom holds me separate.
I look upon thy beauty’s mystery for as
I hold thee in my caring hand new things
of earth and heaven I understand.
8) A mist lies on the twilight sea;
it forms a bridge til thoughts be changed
to dreams. The fiery sun’s departing glow
with warlike glory gleams and the last
red embers die.
Then with the dying of the day
the bridge of dreams across come vision
airy as the mist and we see the joys of other
days, the sorrows that are past and through
them all how Nature’s hand
shapes out the best at last. We see that
though the passions rage the soul that scornful
of life’s scars strives for calm, like that of stars
that shine like the mist above.
9) I wandered sadly by a shadowed sea
as darkness triumphed. My soul was kinsman
to the sleeping night.
A wind came wandering o’er the deep and
passed me with a plaintive lonely sigh
wending onward moaned and seemed to weep
as though it had harsh troubles, e’en as I.
For if man’s zenith were to-day would life be
worth its trials, worth the pain and mortal life
if but a preface brief, a discord harsh, to
make our after-life more sweet?
10) Kingdom of the west thy million
azure domes of wood and prairie sky
may throne his kin in generous homes
pure spirited as are thy snows,
harmonious as thy water flowers
sons soaring as the wings of worth
lust-burnt for lofty Virtue’s spoil,
strength driven emperors of earth
eager for plunder, young empress of
an earth renewed follow thy mountains
to the skies, and gazing in their footsteps
scan the message in the flower that dies
til tranquil paths of love may lead
nearer to God and nearer Man.
11) We have wandered where beauty lies
mongst purple violets dancing on the leas
and lakes like silver mirrors
searching the wild rose in her costly guise
and mingling with the sun’s gold radiancies
that shone upon the painted flower seas
from out the heaven-girt cavern of the skies
that lay across our pathway, all unseen.
That withers wantonly and scatters their
needed kith to fade awhile and darkly languish
on thou wast a flower chilled in summer time
Frail with its beauty, strengthless with its grace.
Thou wast a flower in an unnative clime
that Death upgathered in his wild embrace.
Did angels hear the moaning of the skies, their
waiting lovely shapes and gentle eyes grieving
for our throes and gentle Jesus heedful of our woes?
But let my heart weep for its dark distress when bright
remembrance haunts its emptiness, weep for
these tears, but joy that joy is thine.
With couch of carven gold and amethyst
ornate with Indian stones that brightly glist
and gleaming walls encrust with jewelry
nor cell adorned with splendor,
myrrh jars gemmed with rare pearls
gorgeous mist or chiseled ivory vases
of time no heart to let the fair endure
with my rose-blooms and milken lilies pure
and thine own beauty most of all.
And give her to the spoiling earth’s embrace
and she shall lie upon a hateful bed and the
white beauty of her sleeping face shut in
with Destiny devouring a loathsome banquet
of her clay and but a little mete of dust shall
stay of all her store of beauty and delight.
And thou shalt mix with earth and air and
sea when my elder footsteps lead amidst our
pathways in the flowered mead thy form I
worshiped in the silence of the tomb; shall she
not save thy spirit’s rarer bloom?
O’er troubled spheres where flickering planets
flare and dying suns emit their pallid glare ghastly
mists enshroud and mock where hurtling stars crash
and rumbling space forth-vomits worlds that blare
and roar through stagnant gulfs while shrieking
whirlwinds join their hideous flight.
But I dare believe there is an azure land where
bloom our dead in beauties all unthought
with senses new they endlessly employ
to know its pleasant life and deathless joy.
Where bursting suns impel their crystal blaze
and snowy flames into the cosmic haze
above the zones where painted lightnings
flashing and battling cast their gorgeous
flames in vast displays yet beyond where young
suns hold their sways while worlds swirl round
to drink of virgin light.
I have a faith there is a kingdom fair
where tho art watching with flashing eyes
companies of angels that uprise
with splendors in the tranquil air
chanting songs of love that never dies and
bliss that springs eternal everywhere
and weaves a rose-bloom in thy dusky hair.
Seraph hands masterly cast your roaring
trumpets, send a joyful thunder out!
Scream violins in ecstacy and let the sons
of God send forth a shout to swell the mighty
pealing triumph rout and shall all heaven with
crashing symphony mark the pearly dawn
and writhing silver smokes that there appear
a glistening majesty draw near with God
her guide and Death her charioteer.
I have a friend that shall control my wanderings
with her soft angel hand and feed my heart with
comfort and mix her tears with mine and
soft console my spirits haunting woe she
shall watch beside me and in my need ward me
with her snowy wings and lead my footsteps gently
to their goal.
And she hath vanished with her sable hood
and filled her drinking-cup of ebon wood
at lightless eyes that gush their opulence.
The hollow withered earth shall burst
and with it all the ponderous sphere
round busy suns that hang in air
their potent nourishment shall be dispersed
and shadowed unto ruin with the life they nursed
in kindred wreck the sepulchre of worlds that shall
survive to hold the quiet reign it held at first.
My shapeless soul in its immortal course
what ruining hand of time shall find a prey
in me, Kin of the Builder, summoned to its Source?
Thine eyes are closed to earth’s harsh tragedy. Fate
hath called her child away and she hath gone into the
peopled skies, queen of a heritage in Paradise home with
her spirit’s kin that earth kept hidden from her trustful eyes. June 5/11.
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