Spirits out of remoter time awake, conclude This unsteady enterprise I undertake, bestirred To seek by doing your old victory's certitude. All action waits unread in the breviary 5 Conscience scribes on the germinating page of brain, Turned and unturned by each half hour on the clock--- Unwound once too often, and then named death. What is in the poet's drink to make him sigh, Or naked beauty purling at his tender feet 10 To flood his delta spirit to his muddy sense? All true doing does its mirrored loop uncoil Aiming in splendor to uncurl forever Until red ministries of wishes that chafe Angelic ears come spattering back at earth 15 In drum-torrents of sweet-willed rain Or shatter damned, and eat the uttering voice That challenged their cold potentiality With one warm breath, or lucid exhalation Unbraiding in the air. Vital arbiter! 20 That in the limpid human summons diamonds up. I, a loblolly boy adrift alone address you Shadowed sages pulled from the umbraed pall Of so many deaths, hurrying to carry fire In untried hands that take their anxious brand 25 As easy as snow. Cannot the unearned vow I voice at night go unerring also? All raving arrows of a vinegared heart! Cannot this sovereign whisper lipped by a sleeping head Suffice the perilous chalice of gathered hands 30 An over-hasty life has swept together? Still there is a greater unabating chance In any decrepit model of your flagging past Than the thousand inanities dreaming out Today's false-misted, haze-struck 'tomorrow'; 35 I hear the taxing outcry of your valorous start And spread my stretching soul to its farthest part-- Which was a heavy mercury in crucible valleys rolled-- And change every flowing form to a unit of that grace That shrieks ecstatic stasis vacant heavens laced.
From the collection "A Volcano Island"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.