Oh, my love
If you were at the level of my madness,
You would cast away your jewelry,
Sell all your bracelets,
And sleep in my eyes.

A wise man once said, "Water always wins."
     He's right.
For a long time I didn't know what you were.
     What you still are.
I never really thought about it. But now I know.
     You're water.
I did so well in the beginning. You were only a drizzle.
I carried my umbrella those first few days. But I must
have lost it along the way.

I ignored the raindrops for awhile, but you were
a force of Nature.

It began to pour, and you covered me.
You seeped into my very core, infecting
me like the Waters of MARS.

You were patient and persistent. You penetrated
my foundation, ripped open cracks, rotted the wood.
     And what's a body or soul with decaying support?

Water waits. Water cuts through mountains, carving canyons.
     You cut through me to make this.

What am I now? An eroded frame of what I once was?

That piece of mountain that you washed away, where
did it end up? Is it with you now?
      Can I stand without it?

Have you left a deep crevice, a permanent scar?
Have you ruined me forever, or can I still be
     as beautiful as the Grand Canyon?

On winter nights beside the nursery fire
We read the fairy tale, while glowing coals
Builded its pictures. There before our eyes
We saw the vaulted hall of traceried stone
Uprear itself, the distant ceiling hung
With pendent stalactites like frozen vines;
And all along the walls at intervals,
Curled upwards into pillars, roses climbed,
And ramped and were confined, and clustered leaves
Divided where there peered a laughing face.
The foliage seemed to rustle in the wind,
A silent murmur, carved in still, gray stone.
High pointed windows pierced the southern wall
Whence proud escutcheons flung prismatic fires
To stain the tessellated marble floor
With pools of red, and quivering green, and blue;
And in the shade beyond the further door,
Its sober squares of black and white were hid
Beneath a restless, shuffling, wide-eyed mob
Of lackeys and retainers come to view
The Christening.
A sudden blare of trumpets, and the throng
About the entrance parted as the guests
Filed singly in with rare and precious gifts.
Our eager fancies noted all they brought,
The glorious, unattainable delights!
But always there was one unbidden guest
Who cursed the child and left it bitterness.


The fire falls asunder, all is changed,
I am no more a child, and what I see
Is not a fairy tale, but life, my life.
The gifts are there, the many pleasant things:
Health, wealth, long-settled friendships, with a name
Which honors all who bear it, and the power
Of making words obedient. This is much;
But overshadowing all is still the curse,
That never shall I be fulfilled by love!
Along the parching highroad of the world
No other soul shall bear mine company.
Always shall I be teased with semblances,
With cruel impostures, which I trust awhile
Then dash to pieces, as a careless boy
Flings a kaleidoscope, which shattering
Strews all the ground about with coloured shards.
So I behold my visions on the ground
No longer radiant, an ignoble heap
Of broken, dusty glass. And so, unlit,
Even by hope or faith, my dragging steps
Force me forever through the passing days.

I hear voices in my head
which is just thought electro-chemistry
but which talks to me
as though they were people
and today I have figured
that what they are
are the same people
who appear in my dreams
the dream people
who can be anyone
and are not real
but only illusory people.

Bells of gray crystal
Break on each bough--
The swans' breath will mist all
The cold airs now.
Like tall pagodas
Two people go,
Trail their long codas
Of talk through the snow.
Lonely are these
And lonely and I ....
The clouds, gray Chinese geese
Sleek through the sky.

A universe that breathes its natural joy,
through geysers, and the summer sprinkling
of sugar atop burning crimson oranges.

Which finds necessitude,
in orbits of tender frequency.

Which finds contempt:
in vacuous headlands
and marshes filled with spider's legs.

Which seeks unity:
by golden dusty saturation
and celestial chapels
strewn with haunted bursts
from depressed musical chimneys.

Where I am,
futilely seeking to dethrone myself.

["Your mothers and your fathers,"
said he, at the AA meeting beneath
the musty and deserted Anglican church.
"Where the rooms and the furniture breathes
a sigh of relief as you enter.
Where your bodies succumb
to violent pangs of movement,
movement that is nothing other
than the tides of the ocean
and the tautness of a kite string by the shore.
Where three hundred white silken dancers
trot in flowing garments
Dutch windmills to catch the wind
and flow closer to omnipotence."

Before him, a child sadly sings.]