Third had grace, loveliest, angels face,
Second had music and long, lithest form,
The first was a lark, one amorous affair,
All three are now but phantasm, dream,
The forests dark, memory— lost to me.

And speaking to the western wind,
In the sped and turning time of the revolving sky
As a top unwinding like a dropped fable;
He dreams of taking leave, unraveling the coil
Upending his foil
Of listless sights as daylight creeps one more tread
And sweet belief breaks down once again:
Days that are ******* like a sad hunt
When the tracker is bent
On tragic orchestrations that only lead to a duel . . .
Undoing, Oh must it be, "Must we fit?"
Let us know and get on with it.

In his bed the women are only dreams
Phantoms, iridescent sirens.

  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .   ­ .

Yes! I am not King Lir, nor could ever be;
Am a child cast out, transfigured, remote
Innocent, prey to the white flaming truth
The growing down, that clothes my name
Inconsequential, sheathed with shame,
Polite, capricious, calamitous;
Empty of all, it is unanimous
Nor even the memory of ripeness
Invisible, a drop in the pool.

I am weary . . .  I am weary . . .
I shall whisper to the newborns when I am old.

Shall I build upon the strand?  Have swordplay with the sea?
I shall tear my hair, mutter to the moon, bury my wounded knees
I have heard the Selkies singing, sailing with the breeze.

I do not think they will give their skin to me.

I have known them gliding beyond the seventh wave.
I still hear them sing so sweetly, weaving sorrows, on my back
Carving the blue waters as the waves are turning black.

We come and go in cycles with the moon, as tidal waves
Seep and seethe, foam and heave, lone captains setting sail,
In folly with a capsize brimming, before our boat has been bailed.

              

                                        ­                     ­­                                               — after Elliot

Left home, ended alone,
Many travails, trials that cut,
The odyssey of his lashed life,
Took a tremulous toll of atonement,
This lamb whose only consolation,
Being left over at the jeweled altar,
The merciless downing days of droll
And loss, the cruel, blanched turnings
Of uneventful fated choice into ruin,
Never actually knowing his target,
Throwing darts at the sun.

When senses run together, dull in the rack  
Of night, it’s Chaos who culls true meaning.
He mocks the light of day in paradox  
Sings: ‘we are such stuff as dreams are made on.’
The ****** end, embodies the souls watery  
Beginning, and so the beating star is all
Intermingled; until flesh and fibers are done,
Thus: ‘we are such stuff as dreams are made on.’
Though mighty Jove, who beat the antique world
Down, cast poor Agamemnon his fate, it’s
Helen of Troy whose aisling breaks like doom,  
All from the strain of Leda and the Swan.  
For, ‘we are such stuff as dreams are made on,
And our little life is rounded with a sleep.’

Ferry crossing strait—
Undiscovered country, last comfort,
Great Pullman, the sea.

The Blue Falcon, cross the spire,
Waits in the gables of the white
House.  Wounded in youth by crush
Of air, spent, a wisp perched
In the aerie dark with a view of mountains
Blue as ice under glacier.  The wooden
Church from the other side clutches
The sky but the Falcon blue is lost
In a tuft of cloud that bobs but never
Kills.  On this strike he is sheathed in stealth
The dull talons slip as they dry
In the tented air, the songbirds at play
In the high-ground underneath warble
And chide but the Falcon cannot hear
The Falcon near.  His heart is soft
And muted in the breast, his ears
Are dumb to their tickling-songs.  

Before the Falcons time, over
The tilling fields, dropped his world
In the spoils where splendour burst in green,
Rain meant the feathers ran and the woods,
A banquet of game, were bounty's breach
Fording blue currents he was
A fisher in the sun, but the sun
Sank in his drowning sky no store
From plateau to quarry the drought of days
Moved a castle felled in the dancing
Dust, his wings broke in the shuttered
Eye of the sun and etched his form
Into grey silhouette.  

Now, the Blue Falcon, jeered
In the branches of the rooted air
Above the yellowed grass, under the pines
And a great blue mountain, stirs a Druid
Shape, vaporous, in the cauldron
Of the attic in the white house
A throw of stones crossways from
The sacred yews of the steeple spire.

No rout, they did not let out a cry,
With veins of flame in swelling eye,
No word, could semble nor shutter,
The bumpy flesh tore into the light,

In nimbles of silence, nimby smoke
Smouldered by sidle of spent fires,
The house of future days was open,
Their ***** it hearts eternally closed.

Flies in the haze morning sputter and splay.
Water drops from leaves rolling with the blown
Blades. The windy whoo of the owls fade,
Blue buried eyes cradled in the hollow
Trees, the swamps seeker is quietly rustled,
Wings of panoply, spangle-speckle the wind,
Over the flames of autumn, talons thistle,
Crown the dominion of the fall, fade in
Sporting meadows colour, till the dive,
Balm of field, marsh, all ignites. Lever pale
Winds finger through the leaves gravely
And rake as you raid, shoulders that burning vale,
Casualties of insect, the lemming song sings
Mouse and vole flash, dark, sparkles the clearing.

To be religious,
Is to be barren of faith,
Fear is for black sheep.

In the temple of the mind— flash,
Mortal pegs are but fingers shape,
The light of dreariest day, told lash,
All for the rush, conspiring too late.

Right wing ****-wads rule,
Freaks shall inherit the spent earth,
  .  .  .  What is left of it.

I did not look back following the light.  
As copper chimed in the rooting cellar
Of the morn, my heart muffled in delight,
Still in shroud, my father farmed the water.
Set his son to love and the kindred waters,
That man of fire swelled, plumbed with pride,
Made of self, stride and hollow pipes to solder  
His starry hands and elbows panicle the sky,  
But I, being water sign, a young Orpheus
Born in the underworld, found music and words
And maidens of air and earth and wanderlust
To the sun I ran, my fathers call not heard.
I did not look back following the light
Until my love called delivering the night.

I saw a hunter by a country road,
In tandem with me he sailed as I drove.

His hoody-head set monkish to the soil
Conjured up music so soundful, sacred,
And I unmoving over a tired flesh—
Coloured vehicle felt naked and dead

For he so saintly robed and dressed to ****
In the colours of the sky prayed with wings,
My harrier, his eyes cleansed purity and gold
While mine unsightly piebald pale and blue.

But want of food dovetailed two craving
Creatures, yet— over fed I felt rusty
Below his steely hunger and what saving
Grace God might offer either mice or men.