All the heavy world is frightening

Bright days and clear nights are fit for idle gods
Raised in vain the screen

Never lowered
Long ago

I moved myself to face the mountain
Whither dost thy hide from your magic
In what moonlight-tangled meshes of perfume
Where the deep woods glimmer with the jasmine's bloom
I'll feed thee, O beloved, on love and wild red honey
I'll bear thee in a basket of rushes
To a palace bower where golden vested maidens
Thread with mellow laughter the petals of delight
Whither dost thou loiter

By what murmuring hollows
Where oleanders scatter their ambrosial fire
Thou subtle man of mellifluous verse
Thou silver-breasted beam of desire
When, in the night, I wait
Life seems to me

As hanging by a thread
And he came in

Threw out the mantle's edges

When compared with the gentle piper's tread?
Declined to me with a sincere heed
I say to him "Did you dictate the Pages Of Hell to Dante?"
He answers, "Yes, I did."
And as it's going often at love's breaking
The ghost of first days came again to us
The silver willow through my window, then stretched in
The silver beauty of his gentle branches
The bird began to sing the song of light and pleasure
To us, who fears to lift looks from the earth
Who are so lofty, bitter and intense
About days when we were saved together
Though he has no form
My eyes saw him
His glory is fire in my mind
That knows
His secret inner form
Invented by the soul
Has no boundary
In it our senses end
Words cannot hold him
Yet in him all words are
When he comes back to my arms
I'll make him feel what nobody ever felt
We were dead a little while together then, serene
And afloat on the strange broad canopy
Of the abandoned world
Everywhere
Me
Vanishing into him
Like water
Leave the smoldering cities below
(we have done all we could)
We have given until we have no more to give
Alas, it was pity, rather than love, we gave
Now having given all, let us leave all
Above all, let us leave pity
And mount higher
To love—resurrection

 

 

In the thunderbolt suit

Oh Poet, what is the matter?
Who knows which is the fallen flower
Whose sobbing memories make you so restless
Ask me not, friend
I too weep over broken hearts
So your emotions are aroused
Sheets of water have spread
From a handful of tears
Drown yourself! Rain!
As a traveller from a weary land
Waiting in the antechamber of your sanctuary
Surrounded by familiar ghosts
A vision arises
It is not the spirit of the future that enters me
My heart is already well acquainted with that descent
It is he the rising power that whispers from the past
" Treasure is strewn in all directions of time and space from the omphalus "
My soul vibrates with winged denizens of spirit
The oracle offers me here in her outer court
Well past the zenith
Sends its fire over Parnassus
In a flash the serpent leaps
A reversed lightning bolt from earth to heaven
Into the chasm of Delphi
There are times
On the inner journey
When the winds of Samsara blow the veils of Maya
And curtain the horizon
The path ahead shrinks down to three visible steps
Then one
Which must be taken nonetheless
...and the next
Until the soul's foot will no longer lift
To the command of spirit
What remains is the will to stand
A persistent drum
A tawny flame
That will not be put out
A stubborn stone
Of waiting ....
Demanding
Life

The Beginning of Doves

The coeternal laserbeam
May I express unblamed?
Dwelt from eternity
Bright effluence of bright essence
Or hear this rather pure ethereal stream
Increate
The rising world of waters dark and deep
The void and formless infinite
I revisit you now with a bolder wing
Escaped the paradise lost, though long detained
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight
Through middle darkness
With other notes
Then to the orphean lyre
I sung of chaos and everlasting night
Taught by the heavenly muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to re-ascend
Though hard and rare, I revisit you
And feel your sovran vital lamp
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt
Clear spring, or shady grove
Smit with the love of sacred song
Nightly I visit, nor sometimes forget
Equate with me, in fate
So were I equalled with them
Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides
And Tiresias and Phineus prophets old
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate, planet eyes, all misty
Purge and disperse that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight
More sacred and sequestered
Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor nymph
Nor Faunus haunted
Here, in close recess
With flowers, garlands, and sweet-smelling herbs
And heavenly quires the hymenean sun

Both when we wake and when we seek, as now, the gift of sleep.