Glass press, to face and chest;
Bless the fresh new faces met,
Lest pleasant stings, with thoughtful crests
Of white breasted shores, drive thee to bet.

Wander old reminiscent highways,
Find blessed staring people there
Enjoying timid byways
With bronze and gorgon hair.

A mare lunar darkness
Dribbles from their glaring sight;
These good people with blue starkness
Emanating from their pupil light.

I see them now with faces, freshest faces
All anew; the thoughtful ones cry naked,
The new ones sigh to you.

I am a moment captured at the bottom of a glass.
I am the tempered mellow gold there sinking as sand
As the sun d’scends.
I am the fomenting film rippling ‘round the edges
Of tap’ring bubble gases amassing and trapped there
As the ice melts.

Death, O’ you all consuming notion:
Idea; intractable, implacable void.
As you are I see not clearly yet
I see a life made up of the stuff of myth.
With the narrow thinking of a man—
Achaean footsoldiers marching to glory—
I ponder your immensity, think
Not too clearly for the sake of sanity,
Because in fact I can think no more clearly.

For your sake, I say, I have wandered.
I have traveled dust and roads that stretch lifetimes
And that capture moments fleeting in
From great dusty horizons beyond the brink.
The dust, I think, I speak of last,
The road I speak of first.
Yet in no particular order is life
So constrained; nor, by consequence, is death.

Yet O’, to you, I give my all,
My heart, my fear, anguish and pain, I give all to you,
If only to supplicate you at the knees, say
“I am not ready yet, do not rip up the void.”
Yet O’, do you laugh, and you do,
And a pity it is that I be at your knees,
For you are a wand’ring, indiscriminate beast,
And you take life as you may please.

Raise an auspicious eye to the venerable shape.
His head is there, but hollow eyes
Do make up the void of his sight.
And a sinister look is there.
Raise an auspicious eye to the undark’ned mirror;
The eyes show a deep glist’ning light,
From deepest and remotest corners,
Where life is not that way.

Dare I, I ask,
Place light there‘pon
The glare of eyes?

Dare I disturb?
Dare I, remote,
Make time for life,
No absence moaped?
Dare I define
And be r’fined?
Timidity
Not be for me?

Dare I select
Many a dress
All for brides
Who count down time?

Dare I, dare cough
Within your cup?
Dare I, dare kiss
The tender cheek?
Dare I, for sickness
And for health,
Put off the flames
Of blithering?

It were perhaps too good to preen,
This thing, this much elided stream,
To rest therewith, tremulous ream
Of thoughts forthwith from misery.

Let not the beggar hear my words:
There is no hope in timely dress;
World it cares not for men deferred
From caring press and relatives.
Too much it cares for common things,
A word said soft, need not for pain,
Yet broken in its gleaning thoughts,
Suff’ring not well deserved stains.

These things, I say, they cast a sea
Before dim eyes, make blind men cry,
Rob their sight, ev’n in sight’s drought;
This I say, casts little more t’me.

A fool I say, this is a fool I see.
A fool staring, he knowing all he sees;
Eyes beholding immensity,
Perishing.

He grasps the fundamental things,
The first things, the primal things;
Primordial shape of egg, this shell
He sees, he the shape knows all too well.
Flittering here and there the chime
Of interfering patterns of light,
He measures with his instruments.
This he grasps and knows them all too well,
Knows the shape he sees, that basic
All to tell; he shapes the mirror
Images and breaks up all the chimes;
He knows it now, so basic now
It moves in sinuous abstractness,
So dull and so plain.