Even a World So Ugly As This        
  
  
                  Is Full of Beautiful Things.  
  
  
  
  
It was one of those evenings  
when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty  
are one.  
                            
  
  
  
  
  
Waste no day with too-much sleep,  
              Darling,  
The wilderness beckons.  
  
  
Let us rustle the trees.  
Remember to laugh, Remember to sing.  
  
Fill again my head with constellations.  
Fill again my head with consolations of sound.  
For i am inseparable from you, and you from me as well.  
  
  
Remember to dance, Remember to dream.  
Remember to listen, Remember to see.  
For even a world as ugly as this  
      Is full of beautiful things.  
  
  
All other questions of the mortal coil  
More or less become clear  
In the unwinding.  
  
Hushed and heedless,  
The sunflower, chico, and the fountain  
Twi-lit with honey.  
Forests grand with oaks, and the lunar zig-zag which paints the mountain.  
  
  
The slow dripping noise beside you,  
The cool *** of night become icicle morning.  
  
A thousand thousand impish clamors call out!  
The elfin quietude.  The flighty bird. The brotherhood.    
  
The mirror changes with moods.  
  
The brother, the sister.  The merry-go-round of laughing children.  
The daughter with a bouquet of curls beaming gold, red, brown sincerity.  
The freckled enchantment of lovers perennially in Idumaean night.  
  
  
The artistry of female radiance on which all things are born and balanced.  
Beauty such as to drive a mind to madness.  O  
And the splendid metaphysics of the male,      
The shimmering brandy of honed muscle and action.  
  
I am recalling, the ebony of her form,  
Perfect in inexhaustible allurement!  
  
I am recalling, the pale fragility of another,    
Perfect in exquisite pulchritude!  
  
The friendly mutt whose voice exalts sonnets of pure love.    
The great haunches of colts at full run.  
Tendrils of primordial music bloom on the wind!  
  
  
Under the water the world drowns and continues on.  
Yet the measure of mocking men produces only sand  
Fit to fill a broken hourglass.  
  
Let not gladness be empty banter amongst us  
Ye city of perplexed imaginings!  
City of labyrinths, curves, catwalks, and spires.  
An elegant evening strolling with you produces charming memories.  
  
In abandoned churches the ***** blessed us heathens with greater timbre and romances  
Than a thousand caterwauling religions.  
  
  
With Juliet's rose between my teeth  
My jaunty daydream burst out laughing !  
In the snug lamplight of home again  
Vines and evergreen ropes of oleander twined up to the roof and quite through!  
& Together we climbed it to find the proof.  
  
  
Refine your strength, refine your shame.  
By all means, breath deep, lustily!  
  
Even the body which drags weary feet.  
Even the nervewrack'd hours dark and steep .  
Midnight strikes quickly and time melts away, completely.  
  
Apprehend again the heart  
Before it washes away in the storm.  
This and all things that we cannot untie  
Should not bind us to an early grave.  
  
  
Here i grow too old for fearing frivolous shadows.  
The eyes fill with sleep - and then reopen.  
The eyes fill with sleep - and then they do not.  
The conversation carries on .  
  
At times perhaps we hear the ocean  
      grinding grinding  
Those orphaned spirits of old Edens,  
What soon again we are to become.  
  
  
But what is a home unwanted?  
                       it is nothing!  
  
And what is a life unlived in?  
                  it is nothing!  
  
  
The surgeon with steady and learned hands.  
The mechanic with hard and learned hands.  
The soldier. The mother.  The strength of one in solitude.  
The strength of those whom lean upon each-other.  
  
Bubbling bedfellows of rivers rambling  
in a forest of Birch and wildflower.  
The Odyssey in the park with you, under a pagan serenade of moons.  
The red blood of pomegranates passed between.  
  
The throb and churn of engines is lovely in its way.  
The darkness is lovely in its way.  
The present, the past, the future - all the sunsets,  
Sonorous in their way.  
  
Weep and weep into the dusk.  
But what do you imagine bitterness shall win you?  
  
    
The natural harmony and dis-harmony.  
Towers of strained hardening.  
The mud and the water.  The fire which governs.  
Grapes upon the vine, and diamonds in the mine.  
I provoke myself onward.  
  
And say let us speak hastily, neighbor,  
For what time is there to waste  
On expectant verses, and platitudes to over-made faces?  
  
I for one do not care much for dawdling beneath false skies.  
The realist parts of me know too well of life's harsh cruelties, and yet,  
                  realize also that reality is the theater of artifice.  
                  - and you are ever free to see it as you wish.  
  
  
The mirror changes with moods.  
  
  
I for one prefer the perfume of the moment.  
Nothing simplified, and perhaps, yes everything!  
The human smells and earthy musks.  The animal abruptness.  
The persisting imagination, the infinite onward.  
  
I for one prefer to hear the music outpouring  
loud and rockus,  
            Rather than the bells that morn us.
And so...
...From the Benevolent Ashes, We Rise!