“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face:
now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”*
-1 Corinthians 13:12

The half-light pale- a shroud
And light by cones is dimmed.
Let rods take slack against
The pall in onerous work.

There is no glass, darkly-
Nothing so brittle for the bare
Birthed of Eden land-
There is smoke and doubt.

Glass is sand and bonds.
No, more than this is cloud
To man, to hamper man.
Something moving, surely:

Length of grasping arm
And force of fiber, lew,
Is lame to pull this shade
That sets upon our sense.

Nyx, the *****, is suspect:
Her fruit conceed to Achlys-
Geras gives her work-
To ink the lens of Man.

The Great Goddess Night,
Her spawn as Stygian wraiths,
Take Solomon's grace and view
From even mighty Argus.

Granted, God has tools
For glass, but who has might
Enough to pull the mask
From Achlys, born of Night?

                    -c. c. Condry

All this...
O, this shall be his.

He who in well-leaned doorways
And oft-learned corners
Hath resigned any byways
To dream: “A tall order

To rove in the mud
And muck up one's soles”
Says he who would trod
Upon painless goals.

Him safe in his womb,
His wont wooden beams.
Neglect to his comb and
Plume and dusty seeds.

“Who would fret in the rain?”
He asks. “And why suffer venture?”
“I've a cubby! Where's the shame
In my hearth and decanter?”

“I tell you all!” he says
One night, in a fit. “Them's fools!
They that count on the coldness and chance
Of a bleak, backwards world
In despotic hands. Come time,
Come the end- You'll see what I have!”

O, the mites and the mice
And the crumbs and the cracks
And the creaks in the night
And the stock-still plants

And the angles all learned
And the steps all a measure
And every walking turn
And every processed pleasure

And the patterns and ease
With his paper and naps
What is good on the knees
And light on the back

And the age and the greys
And the frustrating lust
And the well-worn ways
And the old codger's fuss

And the twilight come
And the shadows of scythes
And a final look back
Through wondering eyes

And the what-if's and why's
Of the best girl in Eire
And the laughter of kids
In a moistening eye...

And the plain wooden box
And the standard rites
And the empty expanse
Of the graveyard night.

And no crowd and no cries
Just a man and *****
And pile of dirt
Where ol' whats-his-name lays

All this-
O, This shall be his.

                    -c. c. Condry

On a date which is altogether known
In the billfolds of bankers
And the abutting hearts of lovers,
And thoroughly logged in the appropriate
Depositories under appropriate covers,
An event of some moment occurred.

The boroughs stood stock-still that day.
While bureaus of such things raced.
Reports came in the usual state-
Filed with numbers and subsetting letters
And screened through machines
To assure their congruence.

On the import of this the West has agreed
And suits of several cuts conferred-
Their message: “Not bereft of status
Past but graced by status wholly present,
Marked by Trojan Hector's tragic
Fall we come to budding Rome.”

******, the edifice mark'd the change:
Neighbors bowed in novel commune.
Seers took to foment rapture
And obfuscated pictures lent
Their turn to Hells hereafter.
Evoked again King Pyrrhus' loss.

The brazen poet took to this,
Formed a certain sense, a catch
Collecting parallels- change a liquid:
Afloat the wicked buoys of politic.
Ashore the masses- sheep- insipid.
Abroad the falling, downy snow
To rust the marble shrines of old.

But how keen the poet's blade?
Her wit dulls at the thick:
All the rest were just the same.
Homer and Hesiod, through to Hughes
Seek their crises to be the rare
One-off of guilt and bold reform.
But want for change- a timeless sore.

                    -c. c. Condry

In different men beat different hearts
O, love alights on many boughs.
Our fires burn whole worlds apart
Enamored well but not avowed.

O, love alights on many boughs
And branches sway in violent storm.
Enamored well but not avowed
The wind rocks branches, bark is torn.

And branches sway in violent storm
So suffered men embrace in shame.
The wind rocks branches, bark is torn
And heads of state denounce their names.

So suffered men embrace in shame
To swallow judgement, dim and slant.
And heads of state denounce their names
For fear they too hold sinful hands.

To swallow judgement, dim and slant
Abnormal partners yet still wait.
For fear they too hold sinful hands
The ruling men keep vice at bay.

Abnormal partners yet still wait
Not biting back but biding time.
The ruling men keep vice at bay
Too thick to see past party lines.

Not biting back but biding time
Our fires burn whole worlds apart.
Too thick to see, past party lines,
In different men beat different hearts.

                    -c. c. Condry

To you, Man.
To the day
Your sojourn
From heat and brush
Found fecund crescent
And soil.
To your dogged pursuit,
In dead of winter,
Of meat and succor,
And bone.

To you, Man.
To the day
When your head
Turned upright
And began appraisal
In earnest.
To when your legs
Slaved
And freed your dexterity-
Your able
And working hands.

To you, Man.
To the day
You rendered
The plains beast
And whispered
Life into the still
And dim
Of a cave.
To depiction,
And art.

To you, Man.
To the day
When Nature turned
Her throat to you
In submission.
To your implements
And shafts,
Cutters and
Killers.

To you, Man.
To the day
You woke most Promethean,
And pirated fire,
Stole from the elements
Without ransom.
To your second attempt,
Your brash temptation
Of Zeus' bolts.
Again you stole light
And made no attempt
At mitigation.

To you, Man.
To the day
Your wonder
Exceeded your need,
Begat the metropolis
And smoke.
To your institutions
And monopolies,
Your greed
And bias.

To you, Man.
To the day
You traded war
For affluence,
Fraternity
For dominion.
To your plague
And bitter taste.

And to you, Man.
To today.
And you've a mind
To make up.
Find epiphany,
Wake
Into chivalry
And care-
Sow the seeds of greener leaves?
Or continue in sloth,
Stagnate
And succumb
To waste-
Burn the field for just one ream?

So to you, Man.
O, to you,
Man.

I

The arcadian past is dead.
Perhaps it never was.

On one hand a golden vision
Of gallant and splendid men.
Cobblestone dreams,
A rustic thirst,
Renaissance, invention,
A proper bow and curtsy.
The Paradise Garden and
The hedgerows of old-
Glint in the eye of the nostalgist.
Our forebears
And the open heath.
Idyllic.
Would that it still were.

On the other a practical frivolity.
Spoiled milk and discarded scraps,
Leftovers thrown out.
A forsaken time
Of blood roar and cannon,
Disease and fetid stink,
Myth and choking smoke.
Avaricious heads
Atop pauper bodies.
Ancient tombs
Built of Hebrew tears.
****** sacrifice
To hideous and foreign gods.
Barbaric.
Finally, it is no longer.


II

We, being young,
The ungrateful and resentful,
The unabashedly alien-
We are the new now.
We turned away from the trappings of
The teachings of the wise.
We sneered when those dotards
Taught us their language,
Their rules,
Their type.
We laughed when
They corrected us,
Told us not to say that.
We detached from the decrepit womb,
Formed as their inverse,
Reflecting their faces
While defying their antique sensibilities.
We grew of our own volition,
Created our own language,
Etched our own runes,
And,
Ultimately,
Shared with them
Their very graves.


III

I, being young,
And of the here,
And now,
Have been elected
Into something
So much more
Than contemporary,
Than modern,
Something so inherently
Now.
I have been gloriously birthed
Into this open present,
This wonder of
Internet
And knowledge.
The exertions of our fathers and
Our mothers' cyclical toils
Have built such a steadfast bridge
Upon which the constant contrivances
Of our Now
Race around in dynamism.
Aware of my place
In this successive age,
I fervently embrace
Our Now,
Not to reject the past,
Never,
But to nurture its nascent chapter.

                    -c. c. Condry

The way the words looked in midair,
And hung.
The way that “hate” seemed red
And rose with heat.
The way my “why” seemed illusory- so elusive and smoke.
A frail and blue shell withering.
The way that one word,
Hate-
Its proud, vulcan power,
Made me think back.
To when I'd see a perfect “love” every night,
An innocent-pink-cloud apparition.
To when a rare and welcome “proud” would appear
And glow a chaste yellow.
To even when “right” and “wrong” were far off,
Dull, matte, brown things.
And “play” and “plenty” seemed all too ready
And stretched out like a green-grass field
Beneath my feet.
Still-
The way the words looked in midair-
I could only see red.

                    -c. c. Condry

I wonder:

Do the empty places, the ones where we once stood- do they miss us?

Do the void and vacant hollows weep to feel only air
Where once our warmth kept full and fair?

Do they miss the blood that once floated in their space,
Wild on a ride through little tubules?

Do they lament themselves, so alone without cloth and flesh?

Do they think back to every thought that we once thinked?
Recalling fondly our aspirations and fragile machinations,
Our likes and loves, our dreary distrust,
All the rainbow and myriad of how's and why's
That race around behind our eyes?

No, I think that space is fine
With all the bliss of empty time.

People come and people go,
Space just is. Space won't know.

                    -c. c. Condry

We're young.
God we're young.
We're young and rebels all.
Rebels with every cause and to every glorious effect.
We melt the sun away,
And howl at the moon.
We carry our dreams in our jeans,
Our heads in our hearts.
Screams soaked in ocean surf-
The highest highs and lowest lows as but tide on our toes.
The ******* always behind us,
The big bang always ahead.
We cut the chains of a criminal cage,
Search for the red in our veins.
In all of us a personal summer,
Pushed by fear of future winters.
A timeless truth over a thousand permutations,
A thousand generations, a thousand germinations:
We are.
We are fires in the night, stars in a sublunary sky.
We are mutable gases born by open wind,
We are illumination, awakening, engendering.
We seek the world and spurn the rest.
We are young.
God we're young.

                    -c. c. Condry

The sun is up.
And time is woke.
All the busy flurry floating,
All the hurry, headied hosts,
All the sky and Earth and travels,
All the thoughts through head that go,
Every patient, perfect person,
Every war and cruel joke,
Every laugh and feeling smile,
Every dream and distant hope,
All are covered in your shadow-
Science Mother, thinking most.

                    -c. c. Condry