Storms have had passage, and the summer impinged, The rain has come and gone dry again. And the suffering flood, and now, the tide Is sunken that was whelming yesterday, 5 A hard rain broken on winter stalks, forcing an effect. And all with all, stand conjoined, and healing, That stood in deep need of repair before. The rail station turns emptily, and larks alive Diving undo the blackberry bush, the hidden yew. 10 Sparse this vegetation that held us Warm in the slack light of forgotten afternoons, Cool a little, and vacantly hot in sunlight. Summer's tongue has healed the blisters A sun of sand had held against us. 15 October's moment, at the waste ends of our fashions, Made stark the pleasures of our silks and satins. Mrs Ormolu, cheeking her fur in the tea-shop, Struggles splendour from her subterranean moods. Barbed by the Telex in an appointed room 20 We moved, at evening, to the forecaster's gloom Exchanging gins at the slender end of an ormolu table Heavy with the commerce of breathless opinions. O cerveaux enfantins! sullen in afterthought Before the faultless midnight had so devoutly trapped us; 25 And still we moved, as like as unlike, Day's churn whirling the black with white, Gold and unholden, jetted with ebonies and ruby blacks, As like as unlike in longing day's extended pursuit, Spotless, the time that revolved around us.... 30 Have you seen the various papers with signatures attatched? Various hands had signed them in red and black. Swift to the nosedive of a bike I had held them, Stocks and certificates unleashed by the warring bell. 35 Brothers like cruxifixes charged blood out of my eyes, Brother against brother with nothing to tell. I have made my purchase, Thank You, and will take my fall. Sudden staring provoked an impaitient ending. 40 Where's the washed glory of the infant day, Diadems of wishes, stolen sparks under matted clay? Dark leaves spurt their aching blades against us, Warm blushes cluster. Dark, dark, and the eyes gone golden Which held us with their simplicity in the morning. 45 Grasses fountain at the salty marge Bringing green to the barrenness, where once Nothing sighed, not even the dirt, to hide our bones. Endless grasses, endless grasses. Endless, endless. Water was expected, 50 Both before and after; No flood had undone perfection, Nourished in the water's laughter. Pastor and miracle-boy, tell me again What we must do about what has been done. 55 He came to me in direst confidence And went away elated. What, what had you told him? He remained the source of his own confusion, same As Tiresias, who I'd treated in the Alps, the same 60 As Joe Campbell, whose methods he employed. Sow the seeds of terror or ecstasy without regard. Light intertwined had saved me, light Blotted. How many hands do you have, how many? I am exhausted. I am no pastor, but a man 65 Desperate to aid others. Do not call again. It is breaking up. Its breaking up. Et puis, et puis encore? Look in the hymnal provided, if you must, for comfort. Lullam, lullay. 70 Green dust has borne the body away. And now the golden corpse lies laced with silver blood Under teeming Tiamat. O cold momement of touch Elapsed in the mist and foliage. Unclasp 75 Manipulated Nature. Body shall follow Where the mind must wend. Abhorrent, obedient, Parting the waters an alert spirit dives, Divining. The fervent river's circle had pushed us Out onto the fields of praise. Us Albiginsians 80 Stigmataed in the ditch, slaughtered, In the garden plot of sunlight. Swept light--- And the passage in snow assured That had been doubtful. Unpack your heart first The sherpa instructed, and no loss can find you, 85 Knowing divinity a human inclination. The moment of simple touch had come Where I had hesitated in the garden, Dawdling my purples. When I look up it is night. Always. Always the same. Same night. Same star, 90 Prim Argentine! We had put ship to ground In the dream. And the waters closed over us. No renewal in passion. That is the lie. Green everlasting. By prayer like rainfall I shall make This mountain of bones my own, clasping. 95 Lullam lullay Clasping 2. The World Apprehends The world apprehends some deep, familiar change Autumn to autumn, and spring ever cresting Spring... 100 But is it what I apprehend in longing still To push to its effect in some stranger breast Beating wild soliloquies of blood upon the night! O world never answering the claims I throw, O world that in seclusion separate and cold 105 Meditates nothing, on nothing renews and grows To what bleak granduer spiraling the void! Am I forced by some injury or defect in sight To reflect the broody moods black waters Uprising, as if within me, bear to the flood? 110 Black as the answerless mirror at midnight spied, Cold as that pulseless hand invisible Pressed to the midnight face, depression afflicts And will not quit: Cannot some spring face Flood ever-fresh the weary sense again? 115 Why must every flamelike intent of love and joy Feel the barrier of single consciousness Imposed? Alighting love expanding without fault Through all the bent glass this waiting world Wavers composed of, send light to unify, 120 Warmth to make solid as an afternoon forgotten What hate or sorrow in dark solitude have kept Untouching! Is not the interpenetrant Sense itself all of loving touches composed? 125 What wavering brush of its canvas deprived Ever painted beauty right? A song among the rocks Falls effectless as a dying wind, heralding Nothing to a mass insensate as itself. 130 Walk, o light! O walk! Light that can elcipse The sky and Time Whose back is ever curving, Beaten down! 135 Stand a stark Individual alive Past the eclipsing curve Severing Death descends In one blow! 140 The torpid moon above his back With every star it kills but grows more black; Hideous horn Dwindling. 145 Pierce what darkness, Abiding ever, cannot abide; Take the temptless spirit's Tentative lamp Ever entering 150 And enter the undarkened side. Enter it. There Shadowless jewels are lingering.... And I am caught questioning And I cannot hide. 155 The light was a light Of cadmium floresced Or distraught plumage Harassed into a white crest. Light tremblant in ecstatic sanction, 160 Day's praises, and night's intermittent death, Combine in the true tenor of thy gentle eye Sighing all sight past far earth's transparency And faded emblems harping after life Which instead present to thy penetrating eye 165 Wondrous loving wells of the visionary real Upheld in tenderous airs of your own breath Owing nothing to world's corroding realm But bringing ecstasy ever out of faultless heart's And warmly obeying mind's one work of wish---- 170 Desire undying for each charmed instant's Momentary touch, a hand upon my eyes so clear! 3. Epithalium Before the nuptials, cymbals, symphonies, hush Crash of love, hymn-praises, sermons, laughs, 175 Filthy snickerings in the red, rowdy pews, Song-sighs choiring a crush of one from these Million-loving tongues, faith saying fleshes Supposing combed words in a racking wind's stir That tears away all, and in thronged All suspends 180 This auroraed bride's brindled veil swaying simple As kisses, warm as dew, and undone as air, Morning-lifted in outrageous altar light To never flutter crippled from heaven's harsh shut Blues, buoyed amber, eternal, where bride 185 and groom, Skyey twins all tall among May's constellations, Titter back at the spatter-smack of stars Flaming wishes against God's dark, kids again In the coaxing hour of sun and honey, kids again 190 In the awake time, when time, once won hoverdom Of love, I, an unready singer sing, My smile all smiles slimly seamed in dawn's silver Who takes as bud-beginning this thistle wish: That no doom of flood will drown down 195 Their happy miraculous town of rough, bright starts Where every memory's a story, absent clamped endings, And evergreen sprays nail the cross doors wide Open to Spring's blessed day, its fever of ferns, 200 Prodigious boy and girl of the honoured hours Before the widow's long black walk of hurt, Or spark-eyed child's mewling through the roof, Your joined joyed hands, spry fives, numb tumblers, Work all love's agued locks aghast to lift 205 Each crowbarred heart's cement hatch at last. Here to the tying place, the trying place, the tryst- Twisting lamp circle center, where startled guests Gored with gifts arrive scurrying to hear Each undead, annointed syllable, come! 210 Ear the merry sojornings of two souls twirled In wedded love, eat the feasts buried in their eyes Who dance forever the loose measure of their lives By shafted Cupid pinwheeled to their pulse, Gifted girl and lucky lad, who curse not 215 Their execution's unsteady stay on earth, Who prick scrimshaw ivories of their imagined world Or conga roaring Amazons to their flowing feet, Going together their blood-bearing travels down the tongue, 220 Prayering every impossible grace like a thirst Or swearing all paradise in a parched swallow, So becoming is it when time-twining lovers Forswear all long agony's terrored second To, one witching minute in the weather, become. 225 Come syllable and bell! Come harmony and drum! All squeaking rivers come rushing to cry Down to a ministering sea, its flak of salt That washes away all sours, and delivers Love. Somber before the deacon sober, fresh in his ash suit, 230 (With all the names of friends mooing from creaking pews, Clenching soggy knees to see, spooned the froth Of agitated life at their Sunday service, once, And buffooning faces at its bitterlessness) The sugar man and sugared woman approach their lord, 235 Who is Love, and none other, whose breath is caught In kisses they give each other, whose combining Tongue utters whatever their bodies have said, Not blindly divine from the crimped mind down But holyeyed up from the awkward fact of things, 240 And wetly skyward fountains heaps of blessings. Never could my hobbled praises jump to where Their slowest heel pinned a hunching wing, For they are heaven's couple, and leap lights---- Marooning Einstein's murmured knowing, crowned 245 Spendthrifts of forever's free eons, and of this One day's redding rose, thorned before, but now, In upright nakedness is: a blossom wholly blossom. And here the stanzaed lovers stand and wave Forever young against the grain of any decay, 250 Sprung above by solacing lungs and gold loins, Primed in the unenvying noontime to use Their smallest wasted hours in largest ways, Fondle doubts like aches out of their living skins, And glow all loving-full all afternoon. 255 And when all the lead-legged world can stamp for this Magic miracle minuet its dancing due, Subliming hates by carefree steps to some Near perfect finger dance of tippling care, Then forever's monotony will kneel to bliss 260 And every sky-cast instant will fly us round to this: Sugar lovers tilting on their cake to kiss. 4. The Dead Redeemed HE Is it my one love again, restored 265 From storm and all the difficult stress Midnight remembrance in darkness clasps upon us! O see her, my slim-hipped silver lily Returned to this life. Brief life! Watch Her cold chaste lips warm from snow to rose--- 270 Blush from this blood-color to incandescence! In holy illumne, her breath, all softness, slips From a heart of purer air thru molten lips. Of all harsher striving now divest The cloudy anvil in your breast; let melt 275 The winter diadem cold ambition keeps. Dear bare-headed child, lost in weeping spring, Dance back to us! O the aweful glory Of her eye has some dawning motion in it! O eyes do not break, seeing miracles. 280 O heart dare not out-pace your temper, Made mad by this passion. I'll take The sweet delerious heat of her Now to life restored. She was Eve icicled over: To this still manner unnaturally brought, 285 By innocent want divided from the sunny vale Whose oven Love warmed temperate paradise Within her, and made her exile heaven Untouched by the prohibiting sword of fire The hot herald angel holds against us, 290 Halting readmittance atop that palmy hill Of green summer man first inhabits. O how her eye now swivels to my sunken gaze! By my sin, none have ever known Such melting tenderness as I, 295 Barely in my solid senses speaking, Who witness this. She steps! And to thy embrace Never again, dear, dear, will I falter. O all the earth may wrap itself in death And the unpeopled globe go snowballing 300 Through infinite uncharitable space Seeking out the shapeless source of darkness In an abyss of time, I shall not care Who holds my world in inches of my heart. SHE 305 Uncrowned and wetted by these servent's tears, I take my life now and forever from The love you give. HE O then take, take it all! 310 Of that joy I never shall lie desolate again. SHE I dart like a humble robin round your face, Taking here and there from you, my earth, Her everything. And who, nesting in the springtime 315 Of your fond smiles, surrenders her sweet eggs To a pouch of twigs woven of your beard. There she sings in hope that future time uncracked Will reveal itself as but present-time Extended, your warm arms enchaning all 320 With father-wings as eternal-gentle then To all our laughing company as now to me. For you see, no single life is hatched before you But a pair of ressurrections descended, Mother and child both. 325 HE It is too much; How strange the incidents of life do out-crow The strongest visionaries, and make them drop Their fantastic eyes from the castled air above 330 To the panoply beneath. I don't know what to do! SHE Love, then, that love which loves whatever loves. He that, when purple passion's overthrown, Changes to day's clarity, a simple amplitude 335 Of light grown clearer, and purified, As eyes when thinking on their own dear love Spark the purer for their thinking delight. HE Have I conjured thee out of the tender air? 340 All eternity of sight takes shape And solidity from your shape and shade. Make some mortal gesture so I know my dreams Do not cheat me. SHE 345 I shall quit earth, quit life, Quit everything that lacks a higher pleasure Your unbounded blessedness is the answered prayer of, (For what's noble in this life that its plucking off Sharpens not the sweeter?) and with my own, 350 My sacredest whispers worshipfully incline To heaven's graces in your dwelling presence, Giving evidence in divinest breaths Of this poverty of words. HE 355 No, wait, and wait, Until I am myself a something etherial And may climb to dreams that suffer nothing But exalted visitations of your face, Sleeping in paradise, and waking in heaven still.
From the collection "A Volcano Island"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.