The shadow of a shadow of a man,
Receding,
As Time clasps its withering wrist,
Becomes the shadow of a shadow of a shadow's denizen hand,
Knocking on Death's door, between the separate strands.

Resurrection. Abundance.
Find us in the shadow lands,
Next to the writhing smokestacks and the vegetable sand.

632

The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and You—beside—

The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As Sponges—Buckets—do—

The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound—

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

I have wrapped the coast of Miston, walking from The Haunted Plains to the old church, Once More, once again, never stopping, except for a cool drink and the gentle repose of shade.

I have walked a pale road towards Golgotha, where our Lord, our saviour, Jesus Christ, was crowned with thorns and lofted in pain.

I have walked into old Seabridge town, all the way to where the water runs and where the snow rests on frozen days.

However, there are still many souls to be found in these towns, if only— and I pray— my feet stay supple and take the strain of my long, wandering days.

Reaching into the higher worlds
Through the slabs of consciousness.
Peeling apart the astral membrane
Of eternal, transcendental splendour.
The visions!
The slabs of consciousness!
The rotating, interlocking dawn!

All kinds of myriad forms and vibrant rings;
Rings of light on a spectrum of darkness.
Odilon Redon saw it this way, within his hidden dreams,
Sat by the pale cliffs of ocean spray—
The colours fading out like the diamond light of a prismatic stage play.
And the cells,
Finally expanding,
Whose inhabitants remain locked away—
But still able to reach out via the astral membrane—
They wrap around the trees of the mind as in the dream of the Shaded Serpent:
The symbolic stage play.

He was a rigid sculpture of a man.
It was a funny.
He was bulbous and flabby with latent homosexuality.
All his futures and philosophies manifested as a crude, orb-like nose.
It all feels like a big humour-funny-jaunt to him now.
It still feels like a funny.

Behind him there was a gleaming sun.
His eyes did not point in the right direction and were bulbous.
He had no fingers, only palms.
His eyes bulged and did not point in the right direction.
Horizontally, a star shone from behind him like a window into a grey and distant past.