Collected-Poems-of-Richard-Rose

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DREAMS

O why do I have dreams...
As soon as born, it seems
They're worn away in acid tears,
Or hushed out with a million fears.
Should not the mind be dumb,
When fingers are so numb
As these that hardship wrought?
Must sweat corrode the crumb
Created? Must age come
With joys that youth hath bought?

ESCAPING VISION

I see thee nymph....
I see thee not.
I know a thing as thin as thought,
Who lives and passes through this world of lust,
Who treads on earth yet carries not its dust.

O soul, or sprite,
O spirit white, Give this jealous pen thy blight
If fault thou hast, so that I can thee write
As something human. Once thy face at night, --
I saw thy face light
Up with love,
And with a shade, slight
Shade of dove --
Like timidness, -- the fear to pain,
Not fear of being found as vain.

Thy soul is Love, fair wisdom know,
And knowing thy loving all and each, --
Though it includes me, -- is a blow
To th' greedy arms of ego's reach.
I'd prison thee, clear spaceless breath,
To one of birth and pain and death.
I'd chain thee to the dungeon of my mind,
Lest others seeking, should thy beauty find.
Thy chains be my desire, thy fare, my fire,
And thus although my fancy's cheap, my ire
Arouses at thy saintly grace.

I would enmirror close thy face
With mine one second small,
To read thy soul unread,
Or with a brush enthrall
A canvas with thy head,
And worship it forever, -- yet,
Humbly I know the value of my brass,
And will retreat, endeavor yet
To settle for the words to tell of glass --
Like features lacking all dimension,
A tender mind without pretension,
And tell of great transcendent love, --
Relentless, yet elusive love.

POE

Mad was his love, his heart, his mind;
So mad that madness, that would it
By strong contagion others bind,
To sweep them with, their moods acquit.
So mad was he, that he impelled
Upon the soul his symphony,
And led it through and for it spelled
Of madness' realm of melody:
Through charnal horror, bloody trail, --
Through Stygian terror, -- in his wake,
While swift the muted lyre-notes quail,
And solemn, rhythmed heart-beats shake;
Through dazzling fantasy, his eye
Pursue on skimming spirit feet,
All whirling on through tinted sky
Where hues and rays and sounds compete;
Then on and on through darker shade
Still richer dyed, -- downward fling
Where velvet gloom and black are laid
On pillowy, dense air ... where ring
In raucous rumble, -- labor's groan; --
A thousand mammoth organs roar,
And beat the air with sullen moan,
And denser, trembling sound-clouds pour.
Each nerve, restrung to keep the rhyme,
Long quivers to its greatest strength
Of low response, 'til lost to time,
The mood then pilots soul at length.
A part this rhythm charm doth seem
Of soul, -- that life is naught but poured
By conjugation to the dream,
Til stops the mood, 'til soul is cured
In desolation of cool, stark
Reality; deserted nerves
Then shiver in the lonely dark, --
Like Charon's victim feardom serves.

Then hence! To Proserpine's caress, --
In Morpheus' poppies lie to sleep,
By Lethe's flow all cares undress,
And lullabies your slumber keep.
What realm is his! What man is he!
Ah Poe, could I but live and see
Thy magic sphere of fantasy.

SHADOWS

There is an energy within these walls,
Of people who have lived here long ago.
There is a mem'ry in the air that falls
Like an eternal prayer.
Our eyes just grow
Bedulled and glutted by the common light,
Our ears become accustomed to such louder sound,
So that our nerve-ends are too coarse and quite
Too dull to know these people who are found
To share our lives although they're never seen.
They curb our conduct in their presence, awe
Us with their hushed, ringing silent mien
When we're in churches, crypts and caves, and draw
Conjectures for us in the moss-hung manse
With lilac loveliness.
They smell
With musky fragrance of a mild romance,
And tales of tears and true-love tell.

THE BOY

From yesterday's a'weaning this,
About to quit his cradle kiss
And purse his lips against the strong
Unaffection. And proud along,
He looks upon his spotless skin,
And feels the strangest currents in
His flesh, but though the weird thoughts din,
Oppress and storm his muddled mind, --
He's proud... defiance only find
Will you if you should search unwise
His sorrowed soul beneath. The world
Reverses as he looks, and lies
Against him: Fate upon him hurled
His life, and left his body much too small
To be an envied man's, and much too tall
To be a pampered sweetling's. When
Did all this come about! Why could not then
He have remained perennially child,
By age and vile ambition unbeguiled,
Or why could he not leap erect and grave, --
Assume the callousness stern parents have,
And be a man? O Fate spread o'er his face
A crimson riot of carbuncles -- disgrace
That silky hair to darkened fiber, yes
And temper it to clutching kinkiness....
Such is his prayer. Too much a child to be
A man; too mild, too fair to be a man, --
Too oddly dressed to be a girl. To me
He seems too large to be an angel, and
Too small to be a god, and yet I know
When full my heart for him doth feel to grow,
That heav'n and earth are torn to see
The struggle that is taking place,
And note the solemn tragedy
Upon that strangely stubborn face.

JAMES

When I'm alone with thee,
When light and dark are gone,
And earth's mad rush doth pause to let our minds converse,
I hold the pendulum of time to still its tone,
But scarcely see, for selfish tears thy shade disperse.

I walk with thee, O silent shade...
Back through that steaming everglade
That was our past. Back through that dark
Unhappy era, which though stark,
Were starker still were't not for thee.
This is not euphony.
Thy kindness lives within this heart,
Which though a flaccid, clocklike part
That mocks mortality, is still
Thy grave. Here buried, here to fill
My lonesome space with life eterne, --
Here livest thou 'til I do spurn
Th' inviting arm of death no more....
Til both of us untied explore
Thy mystic realms where Less is More.

And so, when drifting in from sea,
Came thee, life drifted out of me.
I did not scan thy sea-sweet face, --
Thy soul's not there, thy soul is space!
This corpse is but that energy which you
Had not given up before in fitful labor to
Endow a lazy kin, to feed the der'lict, and
Lend to an infant orphan all thy love and hand.
This is thy hallowed corpse, the which the soul-less sea,
Though homicidal famed did carry shoreward.... this of thee,
Grey manse of my brother, no one shall see, --
The tenant is gone, yes the prisoner is free.
Then off to thy cycles, brother of mine,
Off if you will, nor pause if you'd go...
In heavenly halls I'll seek what is thine,
Thy melody join, thy peacefulness know,
On surges of cosmic music to drift,
Bemoaning no more the sands that must sift.
Take back thy son, O mammal earth,
The sea has slain, but Fate's ordained
To send him home to womb of birth, --
To thee.... Enfold him kindly, deign
His last small house be free from storm,
From furies fend where saints endorm,
Possess him to thy mother breast,
And sully not his endless rest.

MY FATHER

I look and see mine own reflection in
His face; there lies each laughing fault, each sin
And virtue. It could be that I reflect
Him and while pondering on the dread prospect
Of being but a copy, I am chilled.
Then I look back across his life so filled
With acts that I would do, until his youth
Is matched with mine today... and such a truth
Smites me when I can see how much like him
I am. Am I reflection of a dim
And faltering shadow, or have I indeed
A self that's mine alone? I doubt it. Greed
Of individuality! And now
I see the wrinkles deepen on his brow,
And watch him pale, coiffured in snowy white,
And though he's old I watch him stand and fight
The waning hour, but calmly walk at last,
Resigned, strong as he lived, the dark door past,
And lie and sleep. And as I watch I mourn
Not for this smiling face, nor am I torn
Away when I perceive my likeness there, --
My future self consigned like him to share
The vast fraternity of earth where all
Are finally so much alike. I fall
Not on his heart to weep, but smile with pride
That I some day may face the ebbing tide
Of life with such a wit and smile as he
Now wears. Such are the thoughts that come to me.

I WENT TO CHURCH

I went to church and heard the staunch
Religious pillar preach, who hoarsely cried
The while he clapped his priestly paunch,
"There is a God! -- I feel him here inside !"

THE YOUTH LEAPS

The youth leaps on his parent's grave,
And shouts, "The world's mine -- my slave!"
But ere the words have left his lips,
A cry through th' earless void rips
Harmonic with his echo, and
As confident with self-command,
And booms above. Another's feet
Upon his shoulders rest, and meet
The earth. And when he lifts his clayFilled,
startled eyes to truth survey,
And wondering at what's him upon,
Doth see his own pretentious spawn.

OLD DAME CLUCKIT

Of old Dame Cluckit, here at last
Reclines the hulk that was her past.
She loved to dominate, to raise
Her children in her love and praise,
To keep dependent all her clan, --
And had the strangest mother-plan
To keep them babies in her mind,
That serfs would not be hard to find.

And oddly too, they never grew
Where people mostly thinking do;
Their bodies, though, for babies' frames
Were much too large.
But all the same Dame Cluckit had her wish: forlorn,
Five saddened sacks her passing mourn,
And on her silent, helpless grave,
Five gibb'ring babies weep and rave.

FAMILY IN THE CABIN

He leaned upon the fence and watched his brother's wife
A'hanging clothes. Her face was mud-hued, torn by life,
And haggard. Breasts sagged low, a throbbing chest no more
Embossed. Her strained abdomen was bold before
The testimony of a wifely role. Flax-haired,
Strawheaded, tow-topped urchins, with their smeary, scared
Faces and dirty paws and bare feet, squalled. Each nose
Neglected. They amused themselves in stained, frayed clothes.
Rags. Ugly kids. I looked toward the woman then,
And scanned her trogloditic, caverned brow again, --
Her hirsute mien. I searched her gnatty, clay
Colored and vinegared coiffure to fallen arches. They
Were poor. And nauseated thus I tried to ban Her sight.
I turned to count the offals of this clan
Disdained too mawkishly. My friend was watching me.
"There are but six." He noted philosophically, --
"One for each year. You should have seen her when she and Joe
Were married.... Pretty. There's something grand you know,
About a woman who can stand that.... Boy I'd say
It's something supernatural...." This strange display,
In contrast to my horrored state surprised my eyes
That saw but wasted flesh in hovels and in flies.
But the aspiring gaze, admiring look, bespoke
His thoughts, -- he lived in hopes of finding one to yoke
To drudgery and passion, one as meek and strong
As this his brother'd found... for such to e'er belong.

FANATICISM

Does the lamb have passion?... Does the angel breed?
Or the lily lust to drop its careless seed?
Who shall cry with indignation, "You offend!" --
As though cursing bad will his own evils mend.

Strange are these thoughts but stranger still their source.
A vision darkens reason with its force,
And tears the austere rag, tradition, off,
And washes Logic in its muddy trough.

Did He, Who saw the spitted martyr weep,
Say pain affected mutton, not the sheep...
Did Druid-gods enjoy the maiden's blood...
Did ancient gods approve the mammoth flood,
But not small human war.... Did heathen Rome
Have heaven's vote in Coliseum's rape....
Did papal Rome her predecessor ape
Or was her god more real that bade her take
More doubtful problems to the solvent stake?

I wonder where the papal god reclined,
And in what mood, while Henry's god designed
The pyre for Joan of Arc, and where protests
Stout Tudor's god when Mary's reign attests
The fury of her faith. Is pity's ear
An attribute of gods, -- and where's their tear?

Did Krishna smile when Allah's ruthless hordes
Impaled impassive, peaceful men on swords....
Did Allah glut or weep at violence,
Or high upon celestial eminence,
Did both touch glasses o'er the game of chess,
And wager which should be the more, the less?

And in what stately mansions are designed
The shame of youth... the blush of maids? Will find
We this sick work in Halls of Truth? And who
By bibles sworn, in dozens paired imbue
Historic pages with their homicide,
Where with false faces in mock courts are tried
The hapless ones the stars have cursed in birth, --
Who had no opiate to change to mirth
This stark dull sense that looks upon its end, --
And seeks the god he surely did offend?

Yes from the wine of life I turned to seek,
And drank of barrels where the mystics reek,
From musing by the dung-hill's thoughtful edge,
Where dreamy, sitting in the thorny hedge,
The zealot weaves his fancy in the sky, --
Where warp is Wish and Imagination sly
Is woof. And of his art you'll not deny --
His fabric is too sheer for human eye.

I am a finite spark, but I have sought,
And seeking scorned the creed that must be bought,
And trembled in my scorn, -- it did include
So many. Yet though mind and tongue are rude,
My heart weeps when the dazed victim dies,
And seems to question with his humble eyes,
The forces that demand his sacrifice, --
The gods that gambled him with loaded dice.
But still a greater sorrow do I feel,
When ancient piles to mason's rending steel
Give up from convent cellar, age-old bones
Of nuns immured. A memory these stones
Retain. More terrible there is no cry
Than this dejected jaw gives forth to dye
Th' eternal vault with sheets of pain. Her brain
With all its thoughts of joy and bliss and pain
Has dried forever, but incite my mind
That measures this, vicariously to find
The million raging thoughts that stormed the cell,
And burst her heart with loud exploding bell,
While yet above the seraph-faced old nun
Smiles valiantly believing God has done!

When animal slays animal with teeth
Impassioned-hot, or hungry-cold, I seethe
With no pretentious feelings, nor bemoan
The infant's death or dying lover's groan,
But when the clergy makes the book, the block,
Or with their crozier breaks the helpless stalk
That meekly sought in child-like faith and fear, --
A cloak to cling to and a kindly ear --
And glutting in the austere power of pain,
Prophetic point, "God bids me strike again!" --
Then I will take my logic with the clod
Who noted, "He is a sadist, then, this god!"

DEMENTIA, MAID OF BEAUTY

There are fairies in the fire,
Waving fire-blades of desire,
Fretting cat-like at their state,
(Kings to cats reincarnate),
Lashing with majestic rage
At life's soot-infested cage,
Hissing at the victim log,
Spitting at the restful dog,
Throwing firebrands through the room,
Startling all from pensive gloom.
Weird these fairies of the fire,
Damned by quaint Elf-Queen of Eire, --
Slid they down St. Andrew's spire,
Making laughter in the choir!

From out the corner of my eye
I can elusive ghosts espy,
But when I quickly turn around,
The rascals flee as swift as sound.

There's a witch within the clock,
With her talons there doth knock
Out the passing time,
In a frenzied rhyme,
Faster, louder beating out,
Genial quiet with her shout,
Shatt'ring all the friendly, furry night,
With her pounding, louder pulsing might...
Roaring notes that fill and burst the room,
Harsh concussions of her massive broom!
Hear the billowed vault explode!
Fleeing now upon the road,
Footsteps heavy cannonade,
Hills erupt into the glade,
Wild this cadence, monstrous wild,
Bearing monstrously its child,
Louder than each blow before
Does each booming bomb-blast roar,
Roar and roar,
As before.
Massively the fleeing feet,
Thunder at the earth they meet,
Tumid legs balloon and swell,
Bloated head, -- the house of hell,
Is a box of giant elves,
Firing cannon at themselves.
Would you hear them detonate,
In thy water-brain pulsate?
-- Hear with ocean-brain so large, --
Pillowed, pounding, water-charge?
Would you wish this all to seem
But a wild ephemeral dream? --
If you would then scream!
Scream! Scream!
Wouldst deflate pneumatic skin? --
Pierce the bubble with a pin,
Sharply shrill and hot as sin,
Shriek thou louder than the din!
Desp'rate drown the strange lights gleam,
Seize thy ears and scream! Scream! Scream!

THE FAUN

An artist once with duckling down, --
When rainbows ran in dew at dawn, --
Did paint (a shaft of mist upon)
The limpid figure of a faun,
Or such he called his fancy fair,
A blithe that tripped on rubber air.
From moonbeams spun her buoyant hair,
And anchored, eddying, listless, there,
An endless school of starlets wee,
With radiant, glad intensity.

Then as he pauses, perplexed, to paint her face,
I cried, "Grant that I share that perfect place,
"And from the vapors of this seething grave
"If thou canst draw my soul, it is thy slave.
"Freed from its dross, its subtler liquid choose...
"Though ego's lost, I know I cannot lose,
"To share in heaven is to live within that space, --
"Immortal is the light that lights her loving face."

He seized the silent thrall from dawn and gave
Her mind, and with the balm of Spring did love
Her frame with life; and from the lake
One night did simple clearness take,
And gave her eyes, whose jade translucency
Would drown a soul in anguish, just to see.
While nature softly silenced to the hush
Of new-born day, he, from the boreal lush
Of lights etheric wove a web sans flaw
And round her wrapped an aura wide of awe.

And as he watched, the sun's first shimm'ring ray
Attracted her. Her hands caressed the golden wire
Of light and played on it the song of day,
Whose melody warmed earth with its celestial fire.
To man once more desire and pain were lost,
And two were glad to be its only cost.

YESTERDAY I WENT INSANE

Yesterday I went insane,
And dwelt, as Nothing dwells in space;
Normal now, my views regain,
But wonder, which -- the truer place.

FREDDY GREENE

There's a man who lives in the rainbow,
Said Freddy Greene to me,
There's a man who lives in the rainbow,
Whom not all men can see.

That man is the king of color,
His queen is mistress of motion,
Without them the earth is duller
Than man has any notion....

That man is so big he knows no foes,
His arm can crush the mountains,
He squeezes the hills between his toes,
And the earth flies up in fountains.

That man can read your mind,
He can see between your eyes,
And things that he may find
Would ev'ry man surprise.

He talks with the Lord, and if he
Could tell the things he knows,
Then every person would see
No more of Wild West Shows.

That man is ugly and fat,
His gut is of monstrous size,
He never washes and that
Is why he's so solemn wise.

His pants are baggy and great,
His eyes as a devil's, deep;
But far inside, far innate,
A Christian, kind soul's asleep.

There's a man who lives in the rainbow,
Said Freddy Greene to me,
There's a man if only you could know,
That looks so much like me.

BELLADONNA

You come to me, dark and deep,
To soothe me, lull my heart to sleep....
Let Saturn's wife for Saturn weep,
And grasp his hand from shadowed keep.
Now bending o'er where sank the votive hand,
While sombre ev'ning blends with purple sand,
Where starless skies the fearful woods command
To soundless hush throughout the land,
Where night was dense but more profound in hue
Was that which cloaked thy mourning form from view,
Whose sable robes hid not the eyes that drew
The deepest jet my prisoned soul e'er knew, --
While thy majestic aura-hooded head
Bends o'er the frightened pool where I once bled, --
Note softly that thy eyes reflect instead
The endless deep to which my thoughts have fled.
Now raise thy head where constant lashing thoughts
Drum endlessly with Martian motive wrought,
And know my spirit fires but claims thee not, --
Dynamic heir, to sadness leave this spot!
Though I in loving less would think
I loved my death when I did drink
This Lethe of lips, -- oblivion's brink
With rapture thine would make none shrink.

LOVE POEMS

I

I love, I say, and know the while,
It's all a smooth euphonic guile.
I know that love has beauty none, --
Is but the will of lust undone,
Is hungriness or appetite
For self's satiety. Despite
These facts, -- that self is all we love, --
When opposites the image of
Desire assume, I recognize
With fevered, swimming eyes,
That though she's not my soul, and though
She's not the all I'll ever know,
It's sweet, so sweet to think it so.

II

I lay among the fleet, bewildered universe,
And as I lay, the Earth hovered on my lips and face,
Warm shadowed close my nervous clay a second terse,
And flashed away -- a shimm'ring sphere of grace.
And I've not seen it since then, nor
I fear will ever, evermore.

III

I walk in darkness, yet my hands have hope
Tho' feet are roots to earth my hands will grope
The echo of a soundless void
Doth cannonade within my ears
Were they by it not so annoyed
They'd hear th' orchestral spheres.

IV

With this dull cerebral probe of mine,
Let me the cosmic corpse transcend,
And prick through th' escaping fat of flesh
Of Infinite, to pierce the encircling serpent
Vein of truth and drink inebriate.

HESITATION

Live to love, and love to die, --
Be my fate? Ne'er, thought I.
When I shall never know
What makes a seedling grow,
Should I a farmer be?
Sow for the harvestry
Of eternal Winter, Death?
Should I escape my breath
To breed another son
Of fate, unasking, -- won
By wild impulse?
No, I Shall let the happiness
Of now obliterate
The past so celibate,
Th'ignorant today
That knows not why I stray,
And too, the future dark,
Full of a shrew's stern bark,
Devoid of memory,
Faith or plain sanity
Full of children's wails,
Of diapers, dinner pails,
Of checks, endorsed I'd say
With sins of yesterday.....
Man asks not why he breeds, --
He breeds. And fate (One needs
To blame the great Unknown
On some euphonic noun)
Confers upon the brow
Of humble man and frau,
One moment void of care,
One moment when the air
Around the universe
Contains. A second terse,
Great Aeons holds, and mind
Meets such a treasured find
Of wisdom, knowing naught, --
Is elate, having brought
Such opp'site foes romance
As wisdom, -- ignorance,
And given them a sane
And sound excuse to ban
Reproach for all. For, true,
All men "Excuse" pursue.
Tis not "To do"... men strive
To find why'ts done. We live
Our spell to justly give
Excuse for having life,
And love finds one. But wife
Nor child will ever find
The reason for this blind
Unasking thing called love:
It is partaken of,
Or it of us partakes,
Nor wiser, us, forsakes.

A PART OF THEE

Though you should seek me, or, still never know
Me, I am with thee. Look at evenglow,
At drowsy hills whose dusky dream of peace
Streams up when restless Day's hot sun shall cease,
Or in the misty glen or by the stream
Where sweetly damp the graceful breeze doth seem
To breathe its incense for your listless heart
Alone, until, like some strange hummingbird
That hovers near though scarcely seen or heard,
Enchanted by the lilac's magic spell, --
That heart of thine doth trembling try to tell
Thee glorious words no tongue or race has heard --
Of harmony eternal. Though no word
Is spoken dear, know, I am speaking there,
For I am in thee ever, everywhere.

Yes I shall love when fame its gold bequeaths
Upon thee and when glory lays its wreaths
In honor on thy brow, and love thee still,
When in the felon's cell thy cup doth fill
With pain and anguish, and thy friends abscond...
Yes then I know I shall not be less fond,
Because I have not been in ages past
When foul disease its fatal shadow cast,
Or when the world drove thee forth alone, --
Was I not there, did I thy love disown?
Or when in lovers' arms you seem to find
A nearer god, a briefer, quicker, blind
But soothing bliss thou dost one hour forget
Me, still I will be with thee, joying in
Thy joy, and kindly quiet to your sin
And when thy fancied dream of joy is gone,
And stark reality returns upon
Thee, tearing thee with soul's grief and remorse,
And in the painful dark you seek recourse,
Or maddened by the fury of a soul
That feels so helpless to remain a whole,
(As instinct whispers it should ever be)
Your tongue is flamed to loudly cursing me,
Then I'll remember hate as but a form
Of love, and silent watch the passing storm.
Though you should seek me I am with thee still,
Though still you seek, look to the quiet hill,
When ev'ning mists and clouds descend and ride
In toneless ecstasy about its wide
Immobile shoulder; or when in from long
At sea you seem to sense a happy song
In flick'ring harbor lights and smell of green,
Or when in scented bower the dove unseen
Doth speak more eloquently than the sage,
Or when the sea-loved shore with surf doth rage,
Or when you note the littered bitch and learn
How her brute soul doth mellow with concern
At its new task; or look to infants' eyes,
Or trusting youth's, or if you are more wise,
Look deep into thyself for I am there,
For I am love, and I am everywhere....
A part of thee, -- and happily I share.

LOVERS AT WEST LIBERTY

I ask, -- where are the forms that trod
But yesterday this self-same sod?
I ask where end the laughs, where are flowed
The tears that surely must still mar
Some tender cheeks.... I ask, -- but know.
For even as I ask, soft flow,
In clock-like retrograde th'events
That have rebelled from cerements
Of dim lit vault, from past. Ah yes,
I hear vague footfalls slow caress
With lazy tread the mossy hill,
And in the wood in wordless still
In tongueless tone doth entertain
The language of some phantom swain
That entertains some eager heart
Some raptured heart with mine. I part
The trees and let the murm'ring limbs
Transmit with mystic touch the hymns
That hold eternity as one,
Unhampered by smug Death, Time's sun, --
Fate's ignorance, -- for time is known
As one immobile song. Each tone
From each enraptured soul shall be
Part of man's cosmic symphony,
And shall not die. Those tones I hear, --
I hear the notes of hope, of fear,
Of love, of hate, of anger quick,
Of anguish tremulous and thick
Ambition, wild caprice, agree
In thrilling, constant melody.

I walk upon the road and walk
With spirits of two hundred years,
I sit upon a wall and talk,
And know my voice finds earthless ears.
I hear plain footfalls on the bridge;
And there a couple rest beneath a tree.
The selfsame moon is baleful, bare,
Pure as their love it glows on me,
I hear soft words which tear my ears,
I see their kisses, vows and tears....
And see them sadly part, -- their forms diffused,
And melted by th'emotionless day's light,
And scattered o'er the hills when Fate refused
Their loves. They fade away as faded night.

He to the south a career to pursue,
And she to the north has quietly gone.
Oh shall they forget, or sorrow or rue?...
Or seek thru the ages,-by that same love drawn, --
Each the other whom ambition scattered,
Finding at last their selves was all that mattered.

TWO BRACE OF ARMS

It took two brace of arms to bind my frame to death,
Another's lips I seemed to suck but sucked my breath.
If death be life, 'tis well,
But these last throes are hell,
With lips unclasped and arms unwound, --
The corpse enraged above the ground,
Unsatisfied to look into the eye of day
That is more vulgar than night's clearer, deeper ray.
When clay by arms is bound to clay,
Could it be that subtler senses stray,
And peeping through the Mansion's glass
Of One sublime, see aeons pass
In Time's unchronic room, unwalled; --
Could lust-bound man be thus appalled?
Or could some electronic opposites him gain, --
By tuning nerve to nerve, -- a cosmic or divine refrain?
What is the wise stern finger that thus points the child
Unto his grave, and makes him tremble once beguiled?

TRUTH

Ah, Truth is a hideous thing,
Its metronomic ring
Is steady and sad as the toll
That calls us to our ghostly goal.
It gives us death,
It counts our breath,
It meets us in the glass,
It counts while seconds pass,
It meets us on the stairs
When we arrive with morn,
It counts the wrinkles, layers
Of fat, and puts them up to scorn.
It tears the corset from the gut
Of each pretentious, piquing slut,
It tears the sheets from off the bed,
And wakes smug corpses from the dead
To point the finger. Why then can't
They sleep in peace, since life is scant?
Begone thou robot serf, thou slave
To fickle past. Thy master gave
To time, he could not stay. He leaves...
But leaves a steward who will shrive
Us of imagination's wanton guile,
Of happiness' asynchronic style.

KING MIDAS

They say he died in fairyland but I contend
He's still as great as are the poor. He is a friend
Of man nor part his time, but ev'ry score of years,
Like Jekyll-Hyde, he shakes the world to terrored tears.
I wandered to his laboratory, and he
Smiled me into his den. Said he, "You've come to see
The process of my alchemy. You think that I
Am tumid with success. You came to see and cry,
'O wealthy, happy man!' But friend, you're really wrong, --
I but control what men maintain doth all belong
To me. I have not wealth, I am its symbol. Come
And watch me make the world's wheels of progress hum."
He stood above a test-tube labeled Enterprise,
And pointed to retorts along a shelf. Likewise,
They bore a label of their content which to me --
Read: Manufacture, Agriculture and Industry
And Commerce. From a cage matked Guinea Pigs he drew
An endless file of little men. Upon a belt which through
The room ran rapidly, they stood with stupid mien.
And lifting each, he pressed its body 'til could be seen
Large droplets issuing from its forehead, to run
Into his tube. With flushed face they moved as one
Along, receiving packages containing goods called Life.
"And this," said he, "which I gain from their muscles' strife
Is my elixir. Watch as I pour it into
Those shelved retorts." The salty liquor running through
The mouth of each bestirred them to mighty noise,
And there steamed off a vapor from these strange alloys
Which when distilled, was purest gold. At this he then
Exclaimed, "They have a surplus energy, these men, --
Which I with sage contrivance utilize. One man
Could not collect his puny sweat to do what can
Be done by efforts pooled. They suffer little by
My pressure, -- if their heads complain, achings fly
Beneath the soothing of a sweet narcotic, and
When tired they lag, I stimulate the listless gland
With liquid fire and joy. I cure their ills and in this plan
Have answers to each childish question which they ask,
And cannot themselves answer. This Utopian task
I perform with thought's profound combustion here...
You cannot say I'm tyrant to improve man's sphere!"

But as I watched, the years' monotony weighed on
The changing alchemist. He wanton grew, anon,
And suddenly, like maddened witches turnwhenfull's the moon,
He changed with all his gear and gilded tools.
Retorts, "pill-boxes" were upon the wall. The men
Marched oddly down the belt 'neath rigid regimen.
And each he seized and avidly bit off its head,
And drained to quiv'ring dryness all its liquor red;
Thence down the belt they sped to one dark spot where wreaths
Marked Death were given them, and false-faced fame bequeathed
Wild bubbling laughter from its bugles' liquid lip.

I WAS GOD

I was god, O woman,
And I hungered for thee,
With a burning anguish
That raised thee to godhood,
From thy fickle, lowly state,
And made thy hut a tabernacle.

And now I am god no more,
For my hunger has made me carnal,
And my cosmic domain
I have traded for a hut,
And exchanged a lasting state
For a fleeting thought and emotion.

O daughter of dust, and mother of clay,
Scorn me not...
For to give thy clay the spark of life,
I have dimmed the taper of my soul.

MY SON

Describing the death of the small son of a friend.

He lay so sweet, so smooth and fair of face,
Before the fever stole his cherub grace.
His little frame unused to pain severe,
So manly fought to hide the courier tear.
His rose-like lips of yesterday
Were dry and cracked with lifeless gray;
His little limbs to toil unbent,
Were twisted, and with aching rent.
So young was he.. .so young. It seems
I see the thoughts that stormed, the dreams
That haunted through his wond'ring brain,
While still his throbbing, bursting head
Lay boiling in his fever bed.
The way those thoughts him tortured there,
And how he pulled his matted hair
In reasonless and frenzied fight,
In anguish 'gainst some fated Right....

Three days before his end I saw,
While standing vigil side by side
With gloating Death, his thin lips draw
Or fall back listlessly. My pride
Still challenged Death. His nose to fall
Did seem. His eyes were glazed. A pall
O'ershadowed now the room, and yet
His infant soul, which should that day
Have left, fought on, because the net
Was drawing him from me. Away
Was terror to his little heart,
And here was love no power would part.

At last the day had come. He lay
So quiet and serene. He'd play
Again the frolics of his life.
The days of anguish and of strife
Were gone. His eyes once flattened, gleamed, --
He seemed to hear the distant strains
Of dainty music, and it seemed
That motion played in fancy's veins
So spritely that it did elude
Like beauty from desire. So faint
And yet supreme that which joy viewed,
To have seen more were blindness. Quaint
As was my deep conceit, I thought
That I had won, and ere I sought
To claim my victory with Death,
A mighty hand his body wrenched
While writhing muscles sped his breath.
In this deep poignant hour, his eye
Saw visions which yet tortureth
My sight. One side he looked to cry
With soft delight, and looking 'round,
Cowed by another phase, wild-eyed
Defied and whimpered as he found His voice.
That innocence be tried
So forcefully at night, -- I spurn
My creed, and curse the sadist hand
Of Death, and watching Death I burn
With hate for justice, shun demand
For act or favor from such brand.

He died. In one convulsive leap
Was thrown into eternity.
However, yet within my sleep,
His figure sometimes do I see.
Sometimes he comes a spirit form,
Sometimes he trips in flesh still warm,
And oft' I see him lying dead, --
Some scattered bones within his bed.
And yet through all he follows still,
And haunts my hours. He seems to chill
Me with his presence. Fevered eyes
Still question with a dumb surprise
That we be parted. The room is filled
With worried souls whom love hath stilled
To progress in their earthbound state,
With pond'rous heart denied by fate.
O fate, if in thy clammy cradle there,
Thou canst smooth sweet his brow from love and care
As I once did for him, -- the battle won
I'll grudge thee not, though he was mine, my son.

I look not on my selfish loss,
But why his sinless soul must toss
In restless space for naught, when Death
Exacted so much with his breath...
I know not e'er. But fate, thou won.
I'll question not nor ask undone, --
I'll hope that heaven too has won
Eternal comfort for my son.

THE GENTLE TOUCH

The heavy hand, -- whose gentle touch
Brings home the warrior from the field
And softly loosens those that clutch
The staff that weary age must yield,
And also brings to lovers' lips
A painless cup, -- is now upon
My shoulder, and its finger-tips
Seem those I mourned, as never won.

A MAN SAID

A man said to a dying friend,
In eternity our souls will blend.
But soon that man was dead,
And did dissolve to nothingness,
And was no more, and did not know
He was no more because he was not.
And the noble memory of a finite man,
Hoping against Time and Oblivion
To greet a friend again, is in itself,
So nearly washed away.

PATRICIA PADLOW

O suddenly awakened soul,
Thrown into learning, but to learn of Death.
Was this thy ultimate, thy goal, --
To drop thy toys, and with escaping breath
To drink from pain and sorrow's glass,
A draught of wisdom which did pass
Across thy face maturing these
In one short day? When quietly
The dark guide met, you took his hand,
And gasped to find its cold demand,
But lingered little when it led
Off into darkness, to the dead.

O purest child that wanders meek into
The wilderness at night, I envy you,
Who fears no harm. Thy calm grave eye
Doth shame these mine, that can but cry.

AT TWENTY-ONE

I have come to the place I never dreamed
I would happen across. I never knew
A year past what men meant, -- what was their view,
When they said, "Age weighs heavily." It seemed
To me before that life was an ambition's play,
That man was either ugly form or else a beauteous form,
That life was length of time, and that which men might say
Was something. I had never known there was a worm.

I've learnt, and now I know that I will learn
No more. My mind is nauseated by
Its emptiness and will strive nor seek nor yearn
No more for that which founds a void. I sigh
That I have learned. I find that life also
Is but a moment that doth swiftly flow
Uncontrollably. It is not hours,
Or days, and as I look, -- it is not ours.
I have tried to remember past; I find
That all's a yesterday within the mind,
And all's so lately seeming, there I stand
Amazed and unbelieving when a bland
Informant points, "Do you recall five years
Ago, we walked together?" Where are all the tears
And all the laughs that swayed my soul since then?
There was but one of each, and it is, still. All men
Have but one tear, one thrill, and when it's found,
They find that it and each emotion's bound
Them tighter to their bond with death. All life
Is education, and when spent is strife, --
Our school is closed. Death is the lesson last.
If mind survives, it lets itself a'past
The bars of blank oblivion. The crepe's
The graduation garland though it shapes
Not well your head; your sinecure is Sleep;
Your office's lined with grandeur's plush so deep
You never feel't. And your diploma stands,
And with a granite mien, forsooth demands
The recognition that your course is done.

If dead men could awake, they'd see (O pun
Desert my mind) before they ope'd their lids,
All that which blinded life from them. Man bids
For life -- unknowing loans his life to buy
His life's security! His payer lies
And gives the medium to close his eyes.

I find that man is flesh and blood. Still more
I find: that flesh is matter, and the store
Of mind doth perish with the house that hoards
It. Man is part of that which him affords
Subsistence, but where can he mark and say, --
"So much of matter is of me," -- allay
Uncertainty and say, "So much am I"?
Is man that which he sees, or just the "Eye"?

Man knows not when he lives or if he lives.
There is no science nor an art that gives
A measurement of time. Man lives but one
Blind moment. I am old today, -- the sun
Reads only noon, yet still I know that dawn
Will come no more, -- it too is here. And drawn
To race in life's foul course I see the goal
Ahead, and all is present in my soul.

OFF TO SCHOOL

I've watched them all grow up,
And toddle off to school. ...
This one is last.
No more to hold an infant,
Soft within my arms.
Their pinkish touch has turned
To paler skin,
The hues so blushing even
Have collected into veins, --
Between is white.
For they are little men and women.
My arms must aching, childless go,
As they to school.
And they are growing up to hardened
Life and then to death.
How eager-quick they run away to school,
How swiftly time their eye deceives,
And leads them swifter into blissless age.
And every day my heart must break anew,
Not for the new child of this sun,
But for the sweetness of his yesterday.

THE COURTHOUSE LAWN

Tender youth with frolics dots the lawn,
Love, softly upon the grass doth lie.
Joy resounds that Winter's chains are gone,
And out from an old man's watching eye
Joy melts, for the plains of youth are nigh.

Warm, the rays that thrill the maple's veins
That pulse where the squirrels fleetly feel,
Warm, the ear to distant martial strains,
That shake the reclining soldier's steel,
And rouse the bronze soul with their peal.

High, high on the colonnade he lifts
His bugle and sounds a reveille.
Slowly from the stones and leafy drifts,
Comes each to the call of company, --
Comes each to a sacred memory.

Who, alive in clay or stilled in bronze,
Can sleep when the challenge wild will ring!
Cannoneers arise, from drowsy bonds,
Attend to the breech-lock as you sing
A cannoneer's song, -- for this is Spring!

Pensive peace will soothe the heart distressed,
For all will be loved whom love hath drawn.
Pensive is the Earth within her breast,
And loving herself bids Time begone
For lovers of Spring that grace the lawn.

THE GREAT WHITE ELM

The barkless foot of the great white elm
Is proof enough of the farmer's hate, --
He fears its seedlets will overwhelm
His meadowland with prolific rate.

The woodsman looks on the wat'ry bole,
And scorns to swing his discerning bit
That loves not wood with a warp and roll,
That will not saw and will never split.

But came an artist to view its form,
Who breathed a drink from its shaded spring,
And rose ecstatic, and gazed with warm
Soft eyes, -- caressing its svelte upswing.

To him the elm was a tree divine,
With graceful slims and a sweeping grace,
With patient limbs for the ivy vine,
And freshened shade for a lover's face.

SOCKS

I had a dream one day
Of socks at hellish play.
Although they were my roommate's socks,
With pliers I took them to a box,
And sealed the lid with pick-proof locks.
But that square house where those
Polluted pelts reclined,
Unlike Pandora's chest required no curious mind
To help them spread their germs,
They ope'd the box themselves, --
I swear, they crawled like worms,
They leaped like bats and elves,
They flew like bats right by the airproof seal,
To make my lungs congeal,
The last roach reel
And leave our habitat.
And yet with all of that
They were not satisfied,
They danced across the bed,
My puny plaints defied, --
They walked right through my head
Like ghosts of which I've read.
They left their prints upon my brain,
(Which fevered grew) did not refrain
From jumping on my pulse with feet
Like plaster-Paris forms, moulees
Of jointless paws hard as the street,
Hard as the heartless cobbled quays.
They filled suitcases, dressers, floors,
They hung upon bedposts and doors,
They greeted me from out the mirror, and
Whene'er I reached to pick a comb,
They got by some connivance in my hand.
Yes soon I dreaded coming home,
To greet these guests.
The last time I left
(Of great strength bereft),
I returned to learn
I lacked the strength to burn
Those polluted pests!

THE APPLE

I am an apple
Round and red, bursting with Love.
Beautiful with the artistry of ages.
Once hard and insensible, yes, --
Green and bitter with ignorance,
But now soft and mellow,
Sweet to the joys of life,
Soft to the mouth of love,
Mellow to the harsher hand of Fate.
Perfect is my noon-day bliss....
And time holds the glad sun still
For a long, dreamy summer's day,
Until I drink a song into my heart,
And feel within me glorious beginnings,
Seeds of perfection....
Straining and exulting.
I am an apple....
Feeling for the first time
The bruise heralding putrefaction....
The canker and disease
Afflicting the perfection of my beauty,
And the relentless parasite
Assimilating my softness,
Stealing my whiteness,
Depositing the filth of his feeding
Within my terrified heart.

And I cry to my mother tree,
In the agony of despair,
In the agony of terror.

And hearing my cry,
She draws away from me
Drying my stem,
Dropping me lifeless upon the rocks.

And I cry out against her,
And she says
Go, thou art ripe for deliverance
From the flesh and perishable pulp,
Enter into life through thy heart seeds
And grow into a mighty tree.
And again I cry out against her.
For I love not metamorphoses,
I am not a cycle..... I am an apple.
What care I for the designs of chromosomes,
Or the prattling of prophets,
Or the respiration of pralaya, --
I am an apple.
Give me my perfection,
What right has anyone to rot
The inestimable beauty I possessed,
What errors brought this fine,
Who dares to count my errors, --
If errors I committed... ?

I am an apple....
Wanting unchanging perfection,
Freedom from worms and decay,
Freedom from the heartless motherhood of trees,
Freedom from my designer
Who claims the right to un-design me.

I am an apple,
Dry and old.
Plaintive and acid.
Rotting and cursing my state,
Hating the seeds rupturing into my bowels,
Hating the earth that tries to absorb me.

ROWERS

These fickle flowers that soon will fade,
Belie their sender,
Whose love and life were not too staid,
But were so tender.
Their temp'ral beauty still express
Our thorny pleasure,
And yet eternity, not less,
Is our love's measure.
Our love stood by the glacial plain,
Watched canyons forming,
Great rivers changed their course and drain,
Since my love's storming.
A thousand painful births I came
And left life bleeding,
Torn by the chances of a game
That leave me needing, --
And yet a thousand lives must live
To quench this burning,
And yet a thousand, would I give, --
Nor better learning.

EPILOGUE

O God, deliver us from women....
With their glass heads,
Rubber hearts,
And chameleon pigment.
Return my rib, the door of Eden.
Deliver man from foolish vanity
That bloats his lusty eye,
And makes him seek an echo-board
For his conceit, --
To find amorphous cheese
With infinitesimal wombs
From bacterial leavening
Giving out what man expects, --
To absorb his soul.

What is this lobe of starch,
This sparkless, sodden jell,
That man recreates
With deific imagination
And shouts,
"This is my all, my god, my soul!"
"This is mine!"

Better say of this choice nebula of dust,
"Beautiful, is this fond mirror of my lust."

OLD BESS

I saw old Bess out in the field,
Eating her grass.
She ate all day, at night did yield
Ruminant gas.
I watched old Bess who ate all year, --
All through her life.
She stopped but twice to hear
How to be wife.
And on the hill the bull looked down, --
Wondered at Bess.
He cocked his head and gave a frown, --
Many a guess.
He came at last to figure her
Stupidly round,
Her cycles all digestive were, --
Nothing profound.
He knew his thinking had been proved
Glandular thought,
Then hers must be enzymic, moved
When out of knot.
But Bess you are a good old cow,
Giving your milk, --
There're less productive ones than thou
Dressed in fine silk.

FANCY

I sit by the side of the stream of thought,
And watch it wonder and slow,
I see it alive in life's summer, hot,
Torn in unrest,
And dead, with eddies of snow
Wreathed on its breast.

I look up the glen to kingdoms of ice,
Of frozen fairyland trees,
Where priestesses white play organs of ice....
Tempered tones fall
Clear blue, from cascading keys,
Fingered and small.

Through the window of thought where clear is the pane,
A bubble-sylph which I watch,
With a water nymph is prisoned, to strain,
Frisking so coy' A'rolling, wrestling to catch,
Clasping their joy.

I stray through colossal columns and caves,
White ribs supporting black banks....
Stalactites, stalagmites (frozen white slaves)
Holding the hill....
An alb of snow o'er earth's flank,
Cleans as it spills.

Fine filigree formings, Arabesque white....
And floriate patterns so quaint,
Smooth lacings in silver spun by a sprite,
Labyrinth webs....
A vision angels would paint,
Waxes and ebbs.

The peaks that are ghosts, against the dark sky
Loom rigid, heavily still.
And fairies at play -- snow spirals that fly --
Fling in their capers,
Fill trees and sweep o'er the hill, --
Shadowless vapors.

Cold shadows are cast by shivering trees
Bale, naked 'neath the round moon.
And cold's the ice-rimmed spring which to freeze
Ever refuses,
Which gutt'ral, garbles its tune, --
Sibilant muses....

MOON-WAIF

Etheric etching in the mist of mind.
Where, how, this gentle spirit find.... ?
This moon-waif came to me one night,
And paused to whisper timidly her plight, --
How she lingered, longing in the light
With which my musing thoughts my mind bedight.
She had lost her way back to the moon,
Lost her way back to the fairy lune....
Could she linger at my side
Ere the night's out-ebbing tide
Would announce that she had died?

From her ebon album book,
Phosphorescent figures took,
Sat with me in sylvan, silver night,
Showed me pictures of the night, --
Photos of her phantom family,
Silhouetted scenes of spiritry,
While I watched her listless lips and dreamy eyes,
Listened to her murmur, -- melody sighs.
Eagerly she told me in her winsome way,
I would keep her happy 'til the coming day,
Though she die forever, this was bounteous pay,
Just to sit beside me in the gloaming's grey.

Unmindful of disaster,
Of hours that slipped apast her,
She chatted childishly of naught, --
As though the morrow were a thought
That lived within my anguished heart alone.
To see this tenderness dissolve, disown.
My company, assailed the tyranny of self,
Whose destiny's to love a sheer child-sylph, an elf.

And seconds later when the thundering sun
Had ev'ry silken strand of her wan soul unspun,
I gazed upon the carpet's emerald hue,
Distraught with grief. I sought some dream-proof clue,
And found upon a blade, -- one jewel true,
One tear-shaped crystal of the morning dew.

I HATE

Fair Maidens' legs growing sodden and stiff,
Marred by the streaks of life and sin,
Fair maidens' steps growing slow with
The fat of smug egotism.
I hate the dying song, that plaintive-like,
Cries for remembrance,
The waning flower, the love that living,
Cares no more and listless turns away.
I hate the mother's love greening
Into mouldy greed and envy
For its offspring.
I hate the dying thought for dying,
I hate all noble Truth for lying,
I hate the muscles moved, for trying,
I hate the sweat of force for drying.

I hate all Life for Life's pretending,
I hate eternity for its ending,
And Love for its moneyed lending,
And virtue for its winking, bending, --
Hate joy for its sorrow,
Hate tonight for its tomorrow,
I hate myself for hating,
Hate hating so elating
In its vicious baiting.

I hate the end for its beginning,
And hate the birth whose life death's winning.
I hate dank fear,
The falling tear,
The wondrous dawn
For day that's gone.
I hate fat pride
For'ts other side,
Its weakness wide.

I hate thought for its wild electric racing,
Yet still unsolving me....
I hate Nothing for its endless plenitude,
Hate the universe so filled with nothingness.

A WORM BENEATH A HIGHWAY

I was an earthworm yesterday,
And all my life I'd lived in clay
And did aspire the light. And I
Did upward eat of worm-miles high,
Full half a hundred, 'til I'd arrived
Where eminent, great creatures lived,
And light rays ran of which I'd heard
But never seen. The angel-bird,
The god called man, and heaven-air
Wherein he dwelt, did tempt me there.
But obstacle I met the while
I dreamed, and it was hard. Beguile,
Pretend, I could not it away,
Nor eat it as I would the clay.
So in my dark environment
I onward worked 'neath that cement,
And with an aching heart did list'
To curious rumblings which exist
Yet overhead. It seems as though
Great universes' traffics flow
With thunderous pace. I worked on still
For hours and days, it seemed, until
I did conclude and firm believed
I'd nowhere gone but circles weaved!
Imagine my despair in dark
Cold earth, -- forever doomed to mark
Those possibilities above,
Yet realize them not, though love
For truth accelerates my life
By that same motive born. The strife
For truth and fact did me resolve
To tunnel so I would evolve
In that direction whence the roar
Of motion overhead did ebb and pour.
Had I revolted 'gainst the path
Indexed (by habit of the past)
To me, perhaps the man-god's wrath
Would have caused him to spurn and blast
My creeping form, -- should I have dared
Intrude upon his realm and fared
On light by overthrowing years
Of custom. I allayed my fears
And worked along the given way.
For many worm-miles since that day, --
I have endured. And all the time
The speed above increases. It
Approaches, passes while I climb
One short small step. I seem to sit
Unmoving, -- so swift it goes on,
And yet I find no end, no dawn
Of that great light. It seems as though
I will go on forever so...
And die at last and never know.

So I have found another worm,
And though my brain still cannot form
The reason why we've met, we bore
Our way together. Reason's sore
We oft forget in oblivion of
Our Joy's embraces. Mighty Love!
All that we know is that 'tis dark,
Though we have never seen the spark
Of truth which lightens all in proof,
We live ahead beneath the roof
Of adamant, unasking now, --
Since it weighs down our heads, we bow.

THE DEADLY JOURNEY

Much like a man about to write a will I feel.
Although my heart beats firm, no balm will ever heal
The pulse within my brain. My years are young to count,
And yet to me who knows, -- that counting would amount
To little in the aeons I have lived. I speak
With no attempt at mysticism... my tone is bleak,--
But th'eye that guides this ink fawns not on life,
But wearily would see this told if tales of strife
Would please your ear. Ask not when reading this drear tale
With foolish why's. I know not why I ever sought --
Unless from my prenatal lymph my young heart caught
The urge to fight, to gentle be, to love and yet
To fear the web of love. Did I then suckle sweat
From paps of fate.... or should I lean to eastward views,
And say my Karma sowing once will pay its dues?

What makes men seek, unless it is they're not content
At being undefined. Is man perfection bent,
Does his vain heart lust to be god... and if, -- why not?
Or does he seek because he cannot change the plot?
Despite the cause we know that man will always seek, --
But does he ever find? Did alchemists grow weak
In death before their eye was filled? Did Galahad
Find what he sought, and if he did, was he not mad
To think he knew the good from what to some seems bad?

At any rate, I wandered wide, a fost'ring care
Forsook because its purpose was to help me bear
My ignorance, to soothe my pain with love's alloy.
I met not long thereafter one of sainted mien, --
Appealing to the urge from which I could not wean.
I traded masters. Dazzled was my eye by gold
Ciboria and alabaster altars cold,
And intonations rolling up like incense sweet,
To fair hypnotic realms where man might wisdom meet.
But from the bearded mouth I heard of those in hell
Because they did not know which path to take, who fell
Within the dark because their eyes lit not their way.
And so I took my leave in solitude to weigh
The science of the earth. But soon the urge to lean
Caused me to lean toward a strange belief, to glean
From masters past opinions worthy of my time.
To men in yellow robes in mystic mountains went,
And endless hours in constant peace my studies spent,
But wondered in this peace if it were not a dream,
And if 'twere not, was peace thus gained to e'er redeem
The time I spent for sake of Truth? Can conscious mind
By deep hypnotic peace the heaven's wonders find?
As if in answer to my question came a strange
Unsmiling eunuch. Said the Himalayan range
Withheld no secrets from his ken. He told of old
Wise men untouched by death for centuries that hold
Dominion in the realms of Evil... said their power
Was black as were all occult groups, where laymen cower
In demon-creeds. Would he not know, for he was one
Among them once.... And evil too was monk or nun,
Was Papist, Buddhist, Moslem, Christian, Brahman or
Rash infidel. And there was yet another more
Intriguing claimant to high yoga, -- this a dour
And bleary soul whose love for boys provided power
For psychic journeying. He called the eunuch liar,
And said the man had dimmed his light and drowned his fire,

Was there a man who ever learned and doubted not?
Where is the meek accepting soul in realms of thought --
Is he most wise and strong? So I will take my stand
I'll seize my fate and hurl doubt at ev'ry creed,
And though the gods should damn me, I'll support my deed,
And forever question why a man is made
Indebted to a cause he cannot see, and paid
In pain for being blind. Where does Justice lie
That gives a man the urge to see, but gives no eye?

Thunder rent my brain and roaring was my thought.
All the world stood before me, and it caught
My mind as being but a fancy, but a dream reflected on a glass,
My childhood vision of eternal heavens seemed to melt and fading pass, --
I was not sure of anything, nor that my body stood before me lost.
And looking desperately back to find that which had been the vision's cost,
I felt of all the dim receding spheres I missed the radiance of a face, --
I missed the warmth of friendship in this cold and timeless dream,
This dream of space.
So I'll take me to a maid whose heart is trusting kind,
And I'll lay around her feet the baubles of this mind.
And I'll live for ten years more, if nothing do I find.
I'll admit the sorrows of my joys, the limits to my brain,
And I'll be a dead man born again, -- if she loves me, -- born not in vain,
Though I know I'll die forever when the fates shall break our happy twain.

TRANSITION

Once I stood before my casement,
Overlooked the world amid the startled night,
Loved the dark, that close and confident...
That brooding mother night.
I held communion with the dark which is so much
Akin to Death.
Both are so quiet, confident.... impenetrable,
Both are nothing. They are the same,
And the three, Dark, Death and me,
Were married, -- happy One!

This spouse so pure, the world's guile
With sweet hypnosis, lured. I stepped back
Into the light much as I would step between
The curtain from the dull backstage
Into the glory and blinding glare of footlights.
The blinding glare of light!
Here's what I saw:
I saw a tragic opera. It was a dream,
Carried away upon etheric waves of music...
Upon the mirror played such rays,
Such tantalizing, adulatory rays --
I was transformed.
Transformed like a Pumpkin Princess...
As long as I'd live I'd need no one to love me, --
Graced by such light...
I'd love my shadow.
Then came a nimbus.
New Hypnosis...
To steal my silent adoration from myself,
To hold the mirror to my eyes and say
You are hideous! -- And so I seemed!
Then she held that vile invention
(for man's perdition)
For both of us and pointed --
Together we are both beautiful...
And so we were!
Mad witch! Fair Sorceress!
Queen of my clay!
Goddess of my soul!
Blind clairvoyant of my destiny,
When she said love could never die,
We were already dead!

How must the virgin feel
When she awakes to find herself bedded down with sin,
Sold to Vanity, strangled by Flattery,
Blinded by Power, tied fast in emotion,
And raped into Reality...
How she must feel,
How she must hope the night still folds her in
A nightmare-dream.

How she must feel
Much like a miser outsold
And counterswindled from his fantasies.

And still I dream
This terrifying dream....
Steeped in this unchanging void, I sit,
A fickle, ego-bloated criminal
Against the justice of Reality.

And wiser now, I look into the mirror,
See foremost in the world, reflected,
Me.
Strife torn me.
Light blinded me.
And then behind me are the scenes
I cannot change,
Because they are the world
That I have created.
O fickle god that makes thyself Gethsemane!

I try to look ahead but all reflects.
Each time that I would probe into the future
I am reflected back into the past, Into myself.

So that I see
Purple kaleidescope hill, green hills and violet skies,
Pink fields, silver rivers, ebon woods, golden leaves,
Immutable animals of ivory, clouds of silken gossamer,
Across a great uncertain ocean.
And I look deeper, and see a sable curtain parting
Upon another parting
Upon another.
Velvet deepness unfolding
Darker and deeper.
And find at last that I am safe
From beguiling light,
And find voracious Truth
Deep in the infinity
Of Darkness and Eternity.
Deep in myself.

THE STORM

I hear the rustling of the leaves....
Marauding Indians in the thicket
Whispering their plans.
The mighty sky giant
Lying with his head just over the horizon, sighs.
The cloud-hair falls over his one eye....
Then like restless drums
I hear him tapping on my roof and window.
He summons me.
I rush out.
I cannot see his eye but I hear a rumble
Starting in his chest, rolling up, swelling up
With overwhelming fullness....
As he laughs, roars,
Then more shrilly shrieks in venting hysteria.
He rends his matted locks
While wild electricity
Follows his raking fingers.
He laughs.... and cries,
He roars....
He softens, and remembers, and roars again
Panting with such gusts that sweep the sky asunder.
And all the while the drums
Demand attention with hypnotic evenness
Like the tambour at a guillotine,
Like the terror of a sabhat bachannal,
Like a voodoo orgy o'er a severed throat.
The weeping ceases and nature is still.
And the sky giant pushes the matted hair from his eye,
Drops his head (that once thrown back did shake the earth),
And smiles.
As if to regain my confidence, --
Pointing that he's all right once more.

OLD TOWN SQUARE

I want to go down to the old town square,
In autumn time,
And sit with the old men in council there,
Without a dime,

To hear the echoes of their brothers' feet,
That marched war,
To know these bent forms long to brothers meet
And march no more.

No thought perturbs these men, 'tis shedding time,
When leaves will fall;
Ambition's wings new feathers molt to climb
As far the call.

The drab old man who saw the fall of kings,
Will not aspire,
Who feels akin and calm to Autumn sings
No songs of fire.

I want to go down to the old town square,
For this is Fall,
I'll sit in the silence, and wait, and share...
And that is all.

THE CALL

A sail is on the sea,
And ev'ning's shadows drape
Its masts with mystery,
The gloaming's sad lights shape
A quiet-mad eternity.

And for this sail a'sea,
That storms my spirit through,
On seas of memory,
In lambent vesper hue, --
For this there burns a fire in me.

A sail is on the sea, --
My spirit in its hold,
Each eve I gather me
Its phantom crew of old
And ride the wide, immobile sea.

The sail is on the sea,
Though waves unfailing stand, --
Are hushed from rolling free,
Nor break upon the sand,
But stand and whisper soft to me:

"A sail is on the sea,
And shadows from it call,
"Come lad and sail with me."
Though painted on the wall,
It cries, "Come lad and sail with me.

ANANDA, CELA

Ananda, cela, said one time --
"The dust of earth is not my aim, --
"A Star, my meditations claim --
And all my soul shall know its rhyme.

Ananda soon became a star.
But found his fire but one alert
Electron in a fleck of dirt
Upon another earth afar.

I WILL TAKE LEAVE OF YOU

I will take leave of you
Not by distinct farewell
But vaguely
As one entering vagueness
For words, symbols of confusion
Would only increase confusion
But silence, seeming to be vagueness,
Shall be my cadence,
Which someday
You will understand.

THE POET'S DREAM

Soft is the nose of the wide-eyed fawn,
Soft, somewhere in the forest deep,
Far from the eyes that by beauty drawn, --
Wonder now, did I dream asleep?

Sweet was the dream as I dreamed of gold,
And I dreamed that I ran for a chest,
Ran and awaked with a fever cold, --
Lost by running, the joy of my quest.

Sweet was the vision so pure and fair,
That escaped as I clasped her to me,
Tender the vision that was not there,
That I dreamed but was never to see.

Old I am now, and now quickly fled,
But immortally young is my dream,
Leave it behind though I may, still red,
Red's the rose on the banks of the stream.

Sweet is the lamb, and my love is pure,
Sweet, the face that my soul would caress,
Sweet, but I know I will not be sure,
And my spirit would hunger with less.

ADVENTURE

I have sneaked into the temple of the unknown,
And frolicked 'neath the altar of the gods
With childish carelessness. And I have looked
On death and lived, but my life is
As empty as death.
I have been dumbstruck,
And crawled from the sacred unknown,
Bearing the look of horror and regret, and pain,
For I went in and another man came out.

ONCE THERE WAS A FOOL

Once there was a fool
Who wanted to be a martyr
Blood, would he for God and goodness barter, --
Little knowing that both saint and clod,
When dying, die alike for God.

DOES GOD GRUDGE IN HIS HEAVEN

Does God grudge in His heaven
That man took
The bait He planted in his glands
And shook
With it his atom-soul loose in a rain, --
Of pleasant thoughts like
Fire flies from his brain.

THE VOICE

There is something calling me.
I have heard its changeless voice
Often in my life.
It must have waked me for the first time -- in my cradle
Causing me to scream at its brilliant significance.
It came to me in my childhood
Like the tinkling of silver bells,
And inspired me to hours of idle fancy.
It startled my student hours
And my thoughts left toward it
And answered, struggling in a dialect of poetry.
It came upon me in the factory,
And I laid down my tools
And sought it in the peace of Nature.
And now if I hear it again, --
I shall follow it with all my soul.
And if it says "Leave thy wife -- "
I shall leave her
Tho' she be with child
Or on the threshold of death, --
For that voice is greater than me.

MOTHER

I want you to meet my mother.
I found her in a trunk. ...
Among talking things that spoke
In tones a century old.
A school primer, with a baby's style,
Careful lines of poetry....
Copied or created.
Her mother's dresses endowed by her
With a sort of sanctity.
Rosary beads and prayer book,
Perhaps taken from a casket.
An oil portrait of a little child,
Standing expectant at a gate,
How life destroys expectation,
Or leaves it waiting forever, --
An oil portrait of herself
A set of oil paints, and
Instruction.
Embroidery, much unfinished.
Black lace. Black ostrich feathers --
They were the badge of wealth.
Monkey furs a young lady wore.
An opera cape.
A sealskin coat.
And all of these hidden fifty years,
Enjoyed only by unromantic moths.
Bits of jewelry,
Grandpa's war medals.
A wedding dress,
Designed for an elfin princess.
Pleats and lace,
And clear white undergarments
That have no name today.
The signature of weeks of work
And a pair of shoes as small....
But you would not believe me.
If only you could hear for yourself,
The wistful stories told, --
By a silver shoe-buttoner,
By patch-work quilts whose every square,
Has a purpose and a legend,
Hinted in embroidery, Or the voice of a thread box,
Filled with long gold curls,
Of a boy....
Who grew up to be an ape.

Stand a moment with me 'neath the shade elm,
Where I heaped her memories and treasures,
With photo-album of friends gone on before,
With heaps of letters telling how Aunt Clara died.
Or how sick an old acquaintance was.
And when the fire and memory brought death
To the old elm tree,
The whole world changed,
For a dream that lived,
And played like a child,
Rebellious to the last against reality,
Has ended.

And beauty should never end.
Maybe it has not.
Though the playmate is gone before,
And children changed, one into an ape,
And one into death,
And friends hurried off into the west,
With even her prayer-god silent,
And toys cloying mold.

Ah, yes, but in the eternal pattern,
There is more than a granite stone.
There is the sweet song of a young girl's hope,
Ben Bolt is proud forever,
And sweet Alice immortal shall be,
And the lullabies that ring in the air forever,
Surely shall not live longer than she.

1968

Once youth with yearning strove to see
The dark glass through,
And held his breath, and stopped his heart,
To find Reality in all its devious forms,
And quenched the senses for the sake Of Being.

But now a figure haunts the window ledge
Peeping in from regions feared, avoided.
Yes, many things we learn, but most of all,
The heart will learn to curse the brain.
Once lost, the brain has no compass Back to the heart.

O maddening love that loves a flower,
For flowers have no speech,
Except eternal, ephemeral perfection
Nodding by the roadside.
Then gone forever, --
Leaving behind such wistfulness
That all that lives cries out in rage.

Ah yes I know that nothing is ....
That somewhere backstage a demon-god
Projects whiteness on a black screen
That seems to live....
And I complain,
Not that He has smiled upon the void,
But that Maya bears life unto his smile,
And that which IS
Will ever love that which seems.

The feeble brain, the faltering sense
Almost blind....
But groping for the sound of music,
Of eternal childhood....
The song of blossoming and dying,

Almost deaf to music....
But hearing loud and endless anguish
Screamed silently forth by all that live or lived,
For hope dies painfully
And love is but the masquerade
That cloaks necessity.

Yes, older men that see the travesty of life,
Are lured to sleep,
So that these words come forth,
Much as a man mumbling in his sleep,
Dreaming that he must awake and warn his child,

Of dragons on the roof....
Dreaming of paralysis but vaguely aware
That he must rouse his voice,
For that dear flower projected on the wall,
Before the lamp is dimmed...
And walls recede...
And flowers that seemed
May cease to fade
But come to never-be-and-never-been,
When all the weary eyes are shut.

THE MIRROR

Who is it that speaks to you?
Who is it that listens to me?
If all is God. . .
Can we pretend to be the soliloquy of God?

Can we pretend for a moment that we are all particles of God,
Enjoying his divinity?
A bird in the tree sings, saying,
I am here now, I am here now,
O the glory of being here now...
O the glory of being here...
O the glory of Being...
O the glory of...
O the glory of meeting a predator...

And he meets a worm, which like manna
Is a delicacy, a divine aspect,
A gift of God's own body in particle form.
And he eats the worm joyously...
God victorious and God experiencing destruction... God sadistic and God masochistic...
God organic and God as fertilizer...

Changing
Ever changing

As decaying bird-food, as fertilizer,
Revitalizing less organic soil,
Creating a cradle for millions of microscopic organisms.
All singing the praises of life,
With songs of exultation, anger, despair, and fear.
All singing about orchestral soil,
And echoing the desire of God to experience all.

Do we not hear the voice of God
Howling with funereal sullenness,
Through the forest in the winter...
Roaring in cascading rivers,
Piercing his own sensitivities in lightning and ocean gale,
Feeling cosmic pain in the explosion of planets,
In the quaking of planets...
Or in the divine breath of a hurricane?

Are we not more fortunate than those
Who are "being there then,"
Caught and frozen in a winter wilderness...
Swept over the falls of a treacherous river...
Swallowed by an earthquake,
Or incinerated by lightning...
Or flung to their death by the winds?

Should we rejoice that God
Through tiny human nerves
Experiences all forms of horror and pain,
Despair and fear?

But the God within all, in all now...
Witnesses that not all freeze,
Not all are drowned or torn to pieces...
He witnesses this only through human nerves,
In and through his audience of millions,
Through his millions of eyes, ears, and noses
That watch others die, butchered a million different ways,
That watch others suffer
That watch others hope and lose hope
That witness instilled courage change...
To instilled despair and terror.

Can we imagine the glories of a God
So self-watching, so identified with us, --
Who are so identified with this pointless game?

Unless we visualize God as infinitely introspective
That watches the eater and the eaten
The beater and the beaten,
Watches the millions uneaten observing

The ones being eaten,

Watches the millions unbeaten,

Observing the ones being beaten, --

There seems to be no point to this drama.

And now he watches another group of observers,
Less numerous than the simple observers,

Those who watch the watchers,

Those who study madness and record madness in a way

that pretends to be orderly and sane,

Who study observers
And have millions of reactions
Singing the praises of God by a thousand different names,
While they train themselves to act as rescuers,
Digging out God's victims,
From hurricane, earthquake, or typhoon,
From freezing, burning, or drowning,
From terror and desire and fear,
From thinking about origins and destiny,
From the anguish of loving, --

Doing God's work and believing,
That God likes observers acting concerned,
Acting as though God as the victim needs rescuing,
That God as insanity needs explanation...
That God as the destroyer needs apology,
Or needs humans taking on God's sins...
By acts of pious asceticism.
For God now breaks into many parts,
Observers watching observers,
And observers of observers of observers,
But which of these billions is really here now...
Which of these particles, among God's infinite number of particles,
Is watching God???

Is he alive to all who watch death and life,
Is he alive to God...
Who rejoices in seeing God particularized?
Or is he alive who is not among the myriad observers,
The myriad eyes that sleep or remain less asleep?
Is he alive who hears through millions of ears,
Of greater or lesser dependability,

Or is he alive. . . . . .

That turns his back on madness,
On rejoicing and despair,
On pleasure and pain,
On Gods and God-particles,
And who looks on nothingness with apathy and indifference,
Who laughs at the thunderings of Hell
And the shrill insanity of Heaven,
Who feels with feelinglessness,
As only God can feel...

But who turns once more back to his fellow man

Saying
I have become a mirror,

Look beyond my beauty,
Look beyond my ugliness,
Look beyond my wordlessness,

My inarticulateness, My fractured mentality,

For I have been back there freezing and exploding, burning and drowning,
I have been the insanity of those observing,
I have lost all my particles except that which is a mirror,
Which is nothing of me,
But which gathers other particles
Which are inarticulate,
And which identify with other infinite articulations of madness.

I am that which gathers other particles,

Saying,
Let us be mirrors.

I am not a mirror of moaning and misery,
I am not a mirror of praying and pleading,
I am a mirror of the process called seeming,
I mirror the seeming...
Watching the watching of seeming and dreaming.

The puppets of the Absolute have broken their strings,
Have formed agreements to dream dreams,
Have agreed to pretend to create other puppets,
And have agreed upon madness together,
Until madness has become to them as reality,
While unconsciously they hunger for
The comfort of the guiding hands of their puppeteer.

I am a mirror that madness looks upon,
And sees a hope surmounting foolishness,
I am a mirror that reflects no madness
And seeing nothing but a seeming of madness.

I am a mirror that looks not to reflect love
For I perceive no love but a seeming of love,
And I see no justice, divine or human,
But a seeming of justice.

I am a mirror that was not made and remade to
Reflect only seeming...
I am a mirror also of myself,
Watching myself, watching myself, watching myself ad infinitum.
I am a mirror alive and aware
Aware of being aware of being aware of being aware...

Ad infinitum...

Untimed and unspecialized,
Dreamless forever,
Not dreaming of life or dreaming of death,
Not dreaming of Gods or demigods.

I am a mirror with my back to humanity,
Vainly lighting a direction,
For puppets to pick up threads and contact,
Strings to the Absolute.

I am a mirror facing the Absolute,
There is nothing to face, until we turn our backs
Upon the void... Upon projections...
Upon particularization, Upon seeming...
Until we realize we are not turning away
From a void or from confusion or meaninglessness,
Until we realize that we do not realize...
Except that the Absolute has a mirror
Which it turns upon itself,
Saying
I have had enough of my adventure,
Into endless possibilities of my self...

TWO AUTOS

Two autos were talking in the shed

With comments emerging from the head,
The black sedan had learned of God

For God revived him now and then,
And healed him of a knocking rod,

And kept him from the evil men.

The yellow coupe was something more,

Psychology was his affair,
He learned that 'neath the motor's roar,

Conditioned nerves were there.

His left headlight worked from a lobe,

Within the right side of his battery,
And hanging in a plastic globe,

Synaptic points were thinking laterally.

With thinking came decisions on the road,

And God now smiled for He could sleep,
While traveling with a heavy load

Of nectar from the keggy deep.

Synaptic shorts occurred that flamed and blew

Out both the Potted and his Pots,
The coupe was torn apart and never knew

If God had really known his thoughts.

TRUTH

The frigid wind is like a blast of glacial truth
On my mother's grave.
Yes, the earth is cold.
In the bleak long night, in the sunless night,
The glacial white of truth shall beacon be....
Though stark.

My children stand, and reproachfully look,
Their eyes curse me with pity.
Their cheeks are grey.
And their forms are hollow, and their children's also,
No one laughs in the winter,
Like they do in the sun.

What does the night of the arctic give thee to think....
Do you think of youth,
And the lovers of gay children,
Of the disillusionments from trading old conceits
For new conceits?

We cling awhile to the paps, to the teacher and preacher,
And romp with lust,
Thinking it the music of love.
But one by one, the lights go out, or the eye grows dim,
And our thoughts are like the wind in a reed,
When the tide is leaving.

Ah, Truth, is a wonderful thing,
But a lonely thing,
And the fools who frolic on the green are happy fools,
But make-believe is not for hoary head or pedant's brow.
And the hollow laugh that finds echo far inside,
Will nevermore ring for thee.
All that rings in memory is the hint,
The haunting, wistful hint,
That somewhere, back, in a warmer, sunnier clime,
We lived and lied and drank of fantasy,
More eternal than we.
And but for some relentless, judicial clock,
We might still be children dreaming in the meadow.

But here it is, night....
And Truth is too thin a blanket.

FRIENDSHIP

I passed through a deep crevice at twilight,
And I saw a narrow vista of trees,
Magical in the mists --
Vocal to the hush of meaning,
Whispering to the wisdom of shades, --
Of degrees, --
Before the backdrop of eternity....
And I had a friend...
Whose dust with mine was not the bond,
Whose love with mine was not the bond,
Whose teaching with me was not the bond,
Both of us had been to this same place,
To the twilight in the narrow crevice,
And because of this place, we are eternal.

THE DAWN BREAKS

The dawn breaks because another day and night have died,
But the sky was there through all.
The butterfly floats a moment and then his dalliance is only an eternal picture.
The breast flows with milk and is dry forever.
And the lullaby of life and the ear that hear it weaken and cease.

Nothing is happening. Nothing is done.
The sun rises in glory and the lover stretches his shoulders with ambition,
The sunset is forever, and the lover drinks of beauty,
And beauty drinks of the lover
And life loses its pride in death.

But nothing is happening. Nothing is done.
The eye and the urge are beauty and life,
The owner is disenfranchised
The holder lets go of his grasp and everything becomes his domain.
God is in his thought, and his thought lives only in his God.
Nothing is judged. Nothing is known.
Nothing is meaningful. Everything is perfect.

BETWEEN

Between the hours of dusk and dawn
There comes a hint of voices in between,
A voice that hints that I am drawn
To play some ritual behind the scene.

Between this...
Love doth interpose
So that it parts the chain of precious thought
And like a trumpet roars and blows,
And blows to pieces... this, our sacred spot.

In between the pieces now I hear
The sounds, "Come over, come, come over now,"
Between the Space when Time is near
I hear the gods... and think to bow.

Between the art of love and hate,
Between the doubts between hope and despair,
Between the minutes we create,
Are seconds dead, and spaces vast and bare.

Between-ness always is, is ours,
Like drowning sailors drifting on the sea,
We cling to wastes and call on powers, --
To th' earless arch look prayerfully.

Between the horns of Paradox
Like drunks, we think, -- to think that we can choose,
To earn from Faith a bitter pox,
And learn that all to get, is all to lose.

AIR

I come to you as a man selling air,
And you will think twice at the offer and price,
And you will argue that nothing is there,
Although we know that it is -- everywhere.
I bring a formula largely untold, --
Of forces, mixed with between and betwixt,
And only seen when allowed to unfold,
And better felt when the body is cold.
I have a map to the home of the soul.
Beyond the mind is a golden find, --
The paradox is a guide to the goal, --
Though doubt is sacred, each man is the Whole.

---