76

Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea,
Past the houses—past the headlands—
Into deep Eternity—

Bred as we, among the mountains,
Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication
Of the first league out from land?

In the orchard and rose garden

I long to see your face.

In the taste of Sweetness

I long to kiss your lips.

In the shadows of passion

I long for your love.



Oh! Supreme Lover!

Let me leave aside my worries.

The flowers are blooming
with the exultation of your Spirit.



By Allah!

I long to escape the prison of my ego

and lose myself
in the mountains and the desert.



These sad and lonely people tire me.

I long to revel in the drunken frenzy of your love
and feel the strength of Rustam in my hands.



I’m sick of mortal kings.

I long to see your light.

With lamps in hand
the sheiks and mullahs roam
the dark alleys of these towns
not finding what they seek.



You are the Essence of the Essence,

The intoxication of Love.

I long to sing your praises
but stand mute
with the agony of wishing in my heart.

I breathe your name as that of a deity
And look at you with stars in my eyes
For it seems you must have come from the heavens.
And if you are of the stars, I am surely of the earth.
You, light and explosions
I, soil and and photosynthesis.
I am devouring you for nutrients.

I am entranced by the tastes of our bodies mingling
The taste of you on my tongue.
The taste of me on your lips.

But I am entranced by you even more.

Well, as you say, we live for small horizons:
We move in crowds, we flow and talk together,
Seeing so many eyes and hands and faces,
So many mouths, and all with secret meanings,--
Yet know so little of them; only seeing
The small bright circle of our consciousness,
Beyond which lies the dark.  Some few we know--
Or think we know. . .  Once, on a sun-bright morning,
I walked in a certain hallway, trying to find
A certain door: I found one, tried it, opened,
And there in a spacious chamber, brightly lighted,
A hundred men played music, loudly, swiftly,
While one tall woman sent her voice above them
In powerful sweetness. . . Closing then the door
I heard it die behind me, fade to whisper,--
And walked in a quiet hallway as before.
Just such a glimpse, as through that opened door,
Is all we know of those we call our friends. . . .
We hear a sudden music, see a playing
Of ordered thoughts--and all again is silence.
The music, we suppose, (as in ourselves)
Goes on forever there, behind shut doors,--
As it continues after our departure,
So, we divine, it played before we came . . .
What do you know of me, or I of you? . . .
Little enough. . . We set these doors ajar
Only for chosen movements of the music:
This passage, (so I think--yet this is guesswork)
Will please him,--it is in a strain he fancies,--
More brilliant, though, than his; and while he likes it
He will be piqued . . . He looks at me bewildered
And thinks (to judge from self--this too is guesswork)

The music strangely subtle, deep in meaning,
Perplexed with implications; he suspects me
Of hidden riches, unexpected wisdom. . . .
Or else I let him hear a lyric passage,--
Simple and clear; and all the while he listens
I make pretence to think my doors are closed.
This too bewilders him.  He eyes me sidelong
Wondering 'Is he such a fool as this?
Or only mocking?'--There I let it end. . . .
Sometimes, of course, and when we least suspect it--
When we pursue our thoughts with too much passion,
Talking with too great zeal--our doors fly open
Without intention; and the hungry watcher
Stares at the feast, carries away our secrets,
And laughs. . . but this, for many counts, is seldom.
And for the most part we vouchsafe our friends,
Our lovers too, only such few clear notes
As we shall deem them likely to admire:
'Praise me for this' we say, or 'laugh at this,'
Or 'marvel at my candor'. . . all the while
Withholding what's most precious to ourselves,--
Some sinister depth of lust or fear or hatred,
The sombre note that gives the chord its power;
Or a white loveliness--if such we know--
Too much like fire to speak of without shame.

Well, this being so, and we who know it being
So curious about those well-locked houses,
The minds of those we know,--to enter softly,
And steal from floor to floor up shadowy stairways,
From room to quiet room, from wall to wall,
Breathing deliberately the very air,
Pressing our hands and nerves against warm darkness
To learn what ghosts are there,--
Suppose for once I set my doors wide open
And bid you in. . . Suppose I try to tell you
The secrets of this house, and how I live here;
Suppose I tell you who I am, in fact. . . .
Deceiving you--as far as I may know it--
Only so much as I deceive myself.

If you are clever you already see me
As one who moves forever in a cloud
Of warm bright vanity: a luminous cloud
Which falls on all things with a quivering magic,
Changing such outlines as a light may change,
Brightening what lies dark to me, concealing
Those things that will not change . . . I walk sustained
In a world of things that flatter me: a sky
Just as I would have had it; trees and grass
Just as I would have shaped and colored them;
Pigeons and clouds and sun and whirling shadows,
And stars that brightening climb through mist at nightfall,--
In some deep way I am aware these praise me:
Where they are beautiful, or hint of beauty,
They point, somehow, to me. . . This water says,--
Shimmering at the sky, or undulating
In broken gleaming parodies of clouds,
Rippled in blue, or sending from cool depths
To meet the falling leaf the leaf's clear image,--
This water says, there is some secret in you
Akin to my clear beauty, silently responsive
To all that circles you.  This bare tree says,--
Austere and stark and leafless, split with frost,
Resonant in the wind, with rigid branches
Flung out against the sky,--this tall tree says,
There is some cold austerity in you,
A frozen strength, with long roots gnarled on rocks,
Fertile and deep; you bide your time, are patient,
Serene in silence, bare to outward seeming,
Concealing what reserves of power and beauty!
What teeming Aprils!--chorus of leaves on leaves!
These houses say, such walls in walls as ours,
Such streets of walls, solid and smooth of surface,
Such hills and cities of walls, walls upon walls;
Motionless in the sun, or dark with rain;
Walls pierced with windows, where the light may enter;
Walls windowless where darkness is desired;
Towers and labyrinths and domes and chambers,--
Amazing deep recesses, dark on dark,--
All these are like the walls which shape your spirit:
You move, are warm, within them, laugh within them,
Proud of their depth and strength; or sally from them,
When you are bold, to blow great horns at the world
This deep cool room, with shadowed walls and ceiling,
Tranquil and cloistral, fragrant of my mind,
This cool room says,--just such a room have you,
It waits you always at the tops of stairways,
Withdrawn, remote, familiar to your uses,
Where you may cease pretence and be yourself. . . .
And this embroidery, hanging on this wall,
Hung there forever,--these so soundless glidings
Of dragons golden-scaled, sheer birds of azure,
Coilings of leaves in pale vermilion, griffins
Drawing their rainbow wings through involutions
Of mauve chrysanthemums and lotus flowers,--
This goblin wood where someone cries enchantment,--
This says, just such an involuted beauty
Of thought and coiling thought, dream linked with dream,
Image to image gliding, wreathing fires,
Soundlessly cries enchantment in your mind:
You need but sit and close your eyes a moment
To see these deep designs unfold themselves.

And so, all things discern me, name me, praise me--
I walk in a world of silent voices, praising;
And in this world you see me like a wraith
Blown softly here and there, on silent winds.
'Praise me'--I say; and look, not in a glass,
But in your eyes, to see my image there--
Or in your mind; you smile, I am contented;
You look at me, with interest unfeigned,
And listen--I am pleased; or else, alone,
I watch thin bubbles veering brightly upward
From unknown depths,--my silver thoughts ascending;
Saying now this, now that, hinting of all things,--
Dreams, and desires, velleities, regrets,
Faint ghosts of memory, strange recognitions,--
But all with one deep meaning: this is I,
This is the glistening secret holy I,
This silver-winged wonder, insubstantial,
This singing ghost. . . And hearing, I am warmed.

     *     *     *     *     *

You see me moving, then, as one who moves
Forever at the centre of his circle:
A circle filled with light.  And into it
Come bulging shapes from darkness, loom gigantic,
Or huddle in dark again. . . A clock ticks clearly,
A gas-jet steadily whirs, light streams across me;
Two church bells, with alternate beat, strike nine;
And through these things my pencil pushes softly
To weave grey webs of lines on this clear page.
Snow falls and melts; the eaves make liquid music;
Black wheel-tracks line the snow-touched street; I turn
And look one instant at the half-dark gardens,
Where skeleton elm-trees reach with frozen gesture
Above unsteady lamps,--with black boughs flung
Against a luminous snow-filled grey-gold sky.
'Beauty!' I cry. . . My feet move on, and take me
Between dark walls, with orange squares for windows.
Beauty; beheld like someone half-forgotten,
Remembered, with slow pang, as one neglected . . .
Well, I am frustrate; life has beaten me,
The thing I strongly seized has turned to darkness,
And darkness rides my heart. . . These skeleton elm-trees--
Leaning against that grey-gold snow filled sky--
Beauty! they say, and at the edge of darkness
Extend vain arms in a frozen gesture of protest . . .
A clock ticks softly; a gas-jet steadily whirs:
The pencil meets its shadow upon clear paper,
Voices are raised, a door is slammed.  The lovers,
Murmuring in an adjacent room, grow silent,
The eaves make liquid music. . . Hours have passed,
And nothing changes, and everything is changed.
Exultation is dead, Beauty is harlot,--
And walks the streets.  The thing I strongly seized
Has turned to darkness, and darkness rides my heart.

If you could solve this darkness you would have me.
This causeless melancholy that comes with rain,
Or on such days as this when large wet snowflakes
Drop heavily, with rain . . . whence rises this?
Well, so-and-so, this morning when I saw him,
Seemed much preoccupied, and would not smile;
And you, I saw too much; and you, too little;
And the word I chose for you, the golden word,
The word that should have struck so deep in purpose,
And set so many doors of wish wide open,
You let it fall, and would not stoop for it,
And smiled at me, and would not let me guess
Whether you saw it fall. . . These things, together,
With other things, still slighter, wove to music,
And this in time drew up dark memories;
And there I stand.  This music breaks and bleeds me,
Turning all frustrate dreams to chords and discords,
Faces and griefs, and words, and sunlit evenings,
And chains self-forged that will not break nor lengthen,
And cries that none can answer, few will hear.
Have these things meaning?  Or would you see more clearly
If I should say 'My second wife grows tedious,
Or, like gay tulip, keeps no perfumed secret'?

Or 'one day dies eventless as another,
Leaving the seeker still unsatisfied,
And more convinced life yields no satisfaction'?
Or 'seek too hard, the sight at length grows callous,
And beauty shines in vain'?--

                                These things you ask for,
These you shall have. . . So, talking with my first wife,
At the dark end of evening, when she leaned
And smiled at me, with blue eyes weaving webs
Of finest fire, revolving me in scarlet,--
Calling to mind remote and small successions
Of countless other evenings ending so,--
I smiled, and met her kiss, and wished her dead;
Dead of a sudden sickness, or by my hands
Savagely killed; I saw her in her coffin,
I saw her coffin borne downstairs with trouble,
I saw myself alone there, palely watching,
Wearing a masque of grief so deeply acted
That grief itself possessed me.  Time would pass,
And I should meet this girl,--my second wife--
And drop the masque of grief for one of passion.
Forward we move to meet, half hesitating,
We drown in each others' eyes, we laugh, we talk,
Looking now here, now there, faintly pretending
We do not hear the powerful pulsing prelude
Roaring beneath our words . . . The time approaches.
We lean unbalanced.  The mute last glance between us,
Profoundly searching, opening, asking, yielding,
Is steadily met: our two lives draw together . . .
. . . .'What are you thinking of?'. . . My first wife's voice
Scattered these ghosts.  'Oh nothing--nothing much--
Just wondering where we'd be two years from now,
And what we might be doing . . . ' And then remorse
Turned sharply in my mind to sudden pity,
And pity to echoed love.  And one more evening
Drew to the usual end of sleep and silence.

And, as it is with this, so too with all things.
The pages of our lives are blurred palimpsest:
New lines are wreathed on old lines half-erased,
And those on older still; and so forever.
The old shines through the new, and colors it.
What's new?  What's old?  All things have double meanings,--
All things return.  I write a line with passion
(Or touch a woman's hand, or plumb a doctrine)
Only to find the same thing, done before,--
Only to know the same thing comes to-morrow. . . .
This curious riddled dream I dreamed last night,--
Six years ago I dreamed it just as now;
The same man stooped to me; we rose from darkness,
And broke the accustomed order of our days,
And struck for the morning world, and warmth, and freedom. . . .
What does it mean?  Why is this hint repeated?
What darkness does it spring from, seek to end?

You see me, then, pass up and down these stairways,
Now through a beam of light, and now through shadow,--
Pursuing silent ends.  No rest there is,--
No more for me than you.  I move here always,
From quiet room to room, from wall to wall,
Searching and plotting, weaving a web of days.
This is my house, and now, perhaps, you know me. . .
Yet I confess, for all my best intentions,
Once more I have deceived you. . . I withhold
The one thing precious, the one dark thing that guides me;
And I have spread two snares for you, of lies.

from The Song of Hiawatha

By the shore of Gitchie Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.
All the air was full of freshness,
All the earth was bright and joyous,
And before him through the sunshine,
Westward toward the neighboring forest
Passed in golden swarms the Ahmo,
Passed the bees, the honey-makers,
Burning, singing in the sunshine.
Bright above him shown the heavens,
Level spread the lake before him;
From its ***** leaped the sturgeon,
Aparkling, flashing in the sunshine;
On its margin the great forest
Stood reflected in the water,
Every tree-top had its shadow,
Motionless beneath the water.
From the brow of Hiawatha
Gone was every trace of sorrow,
As the fog from off the water,
And the mist from off the meadow.
With a smile of joy and triumph,
With a look of exultation,
As of one who in a vision
Sees what is to be, but is not,
Stood and waited Hiawatha.

[Greek: Mellonta  sauta’]

These things are in the future.

Sophocles—’Antig.’

‘Una.’

“Born again?”

‘Monos.’

Yes, fairest and best beloved Una, “born again.” These were
the words upon whose mystical meaning I had so long
pondered, rejecting the explanations of the priesthood,
until Death itself resolved for me the secret.

‘Una.’

Death!

‘Monos.’

How strangely, sweet Una, you echo my words! I
observe, too, a vacillation in your step, a joyous
inquietude in your eyes. You are confused and oppressed by
the majestic novelty of the Life Eternal. Yes, it was of
Death I spoke. And here how singularly sounds that word
which of old was wont to bring terror to all hearts,
throwing a mildew upon all pleasures!

‘Una.’

Ah, Death, the spectre which sate at all feasts! How often,
Monos, did we lose ourselves in speculations upon its
nature! How mysteriously did it act as a check to human
bliss, saying unto it, “thus far, and no farther!” That
earnest mutual love, my own Monos, which burned within our
bosoms, how vainly did we flatter ourselves, feeling happy
in its first upspringing that our happiness would strengthen
with its strength! Alas, as it grew, so grew in our hearts
the dread of that evil hour which was hurrying to separate
us forever! Thus in time it became painful to love. Hate
would have been mercy then.

‘Monos’.

Speak not here of these griefs, dear Una—mine, mine
forever now!

‘Una’.

But the memory of past sorrow, is it not present joy? I have
much to say yet of the things which have been. Above all, I
burn to know the incidents of your own passage through the
dark Valley and Shadow.

‘Monos’.

And when did the radiant Una ask anything of her Monos in
vain? I will be minute in relating all, but at what point
shall the weird narrative begin?

‘Una’.

At what point?

‘Monos’.

You have said.

‘Una’.

Monos, I comprehend you. In Death we have both learned the
propensity of man to define the indefinable. I will not say,
then, commence with the moment of life’s cessation—but
commence with that sad, sad instant when, the fever having
abandoned you, you sank into a breathless and motionless
torpor, and I pressed down your pallid eyelids with the
passionate fingers of love.

‘Monos’.

One word first, my Una, in regard to man’s general condition
at this epoch. You will remember that one or two of the wise
among our forefathers—wise in fact, although not in
the world’s esteem—had ventured to doubt the propriety
of the term “improvement,” as applied to the progress of our
civilization. There were periods in each of the five or six
centuries immediately preceding our dissolution when arose
some vigorous intellect, boldly contending for those
principles whose truth appears now, to our disenfranchised
reason, so utterly obvious —principles which should
have taught our race to submit to the guidance of the
natural laws rather than attempt their control. At long
intervals some master-minds appeared, looking upon each
advance in practical science as a retrogradation in the true
utility. Occasionally the poetic intellect—that
intellect which we now feel to have been the most exalted of
all—since those truths which to us were of the most
enduring importance could only be reached by that analogy
which speaks in proof-tones to the imagination alone,
and to the unaided reason bears no weight—occasionally
did this poetic intellect proceed a step farther in the
evolving of the vague idea of the philosophic, and find in
the mystic parable that tells of the tree of knowledge, and
of its forbidden fruit, death-producing, a distinct
intimation that knowledge was not meet for man in the infant
condition of his soul. And these men—the poets—
living and perishing amid the scorn of the
“utilitarians”—of rough pedants, who arrogated to
themselves a title which could have been properly applied
only to the scorned—these men, the poets, pondered
piningly, yet not unwisely, upon the ancient days when our
wants were not more simple than our enjoyments were
keen—days when mirth was a word unknown, so
solemnly deep-toned was happiness—holy, august, and
blissful days, blue rivers ran undammed, between hills
unhewn, into far forest solitudes, primeval, odorous, and
unexplored. Yet these noble exceptions from the general
misrule served but to strengthen it by opposition. Alas! we
had fallen upon the most evil of all our evil days. The
great “movement”—that was the cant term—went on:
a diseased commotion, moral and physical. Art—the
Arts—arose supreme, and once enthroned, cast chains
upon the intellect which had elevated them to power. Man,
because he could not but acknowledge the majesty of Nature,
fell into childish exultation at his acquired and still-
increasing dominion over her elements. Even while he stalked
a God in his own fancy, an infantine imbecility came over
him. As might be supposed from the origin of his disorder,
he grew infected with system, and with abstraction. He
enwrapped himself in generalities. Among other odd ideas,
that of universal equality gained ground; and in the face of
analogy and of God—in despite of the loud warning
voice of the laws of gradation so visibly pervading
all things in Earth and Heaven—wild attempts at an
omniprevalent Democracy were made. Yet this evil sprang
necessarily from the leading evil, Knowledge. Man could not
both know and succumb. Meantime huge smoking cities arose,
innumerable. Green leaves shrank before the hot breath of
furnaces. The fair face of Nature was deformed as with the
ravages of some loathsome disease. And methinks, sweet Una,
even our slumbering sense of the forced and of the far-
fetched might have arrested us here. But now it appears that
we had worked out our own destruction in the ******* of
our taste, or rather in the blind neglect of its
culture in the schools. For, in truth, it was at this crisis
that taste alone—that faculty which, holding a middle
position between the pure intellect and the moral sense,
could never safely have been disregarded—it was now
that taste alone could have led us gently back to Beauty, to
Nature, and to Life. But alas for the pure contemplative
spirit and majestic intuition of Plato! Alas for the [Greek:
mousichae]  which he justly regarded as an all-sufficient
education for the soul! Alas for him and for it!—since
both were most desperately needed, when both were most
entirely forgotten or despised. Pascal, a philosopher whom
we both love, has said, how truly!—”Que tout notre
raisonnement se reduit a ceder au sentiment;” and it is
not impossible that the sentiment of the natural, had time
permitted it, would have regained its old ascendency over
the harsh mathematical reason of the schools. But this thing
was not to be. Prematurely induced by intemperance of
knowledge, the old age of the world drew near. This the mass
of mankind saw not, or, living lustily although unhappily,
affected not to see. But, for myself, the Earth’s records
had taught me to look for widest ruin as the price of
highest civilization. I had imbibed a prescience of our Fate
from comparison of China the simple and enduring, with
Assyria the architect, with Egypt the astrologer, with
Nubia, more crafty than either, the turbulent mother of all
Arts. In the history of these regions I met with a ray from
the Future. The individual artificialities of the three
latter were local diseases of the Earth, and in their
individual overthrows we had seen local remedies applied;
but for the infected world at large I could anticipate no
regeneration save in death. That man, as a race, should not
become extinct, I saw that he must be “born again.”

And now it was, fairest and dearest, that we wrapped our
spirits, daily, in dreams. Now it was that, in twilight, we
discoursed of the days to come, when the Art-scarred surface
of the Earth, having undergone that purification which alone
could efface its rectangular obscenities, should clothe
itself anew in the verdure and the mountain-slopes and the
smiling waters of Paradise, and be rendered at length a fit
dwelling-place for man:—for man the
Death-purged—for man to whose now exalted intellect
there should be poison in knowledge no more—for the
redeemed, regenerated, blissful, and now immortal, but still
for the material, man.

‘Una’.

Well do I remember these conversations, dear Monos; but the
epoch of the fiery overthrow was not so near at hand as we
believed, and as the corruption you indicate did surely
warrant us in believing. Men lived; and died individually.
You yourself sickened, and passed into the grave; and
thither your constant Una speedily followed you. And though
the century which has since elapsed, and whose conclusion
brings up together once more, tortured our slumbering senses
with no impatience of duration, yet my Monos, it was a
century still.

‘Monos’.

Say, rather, a point in the vague infinity. Unquestionably,
it was in the Earth’s dotage that I died. Wearied at heart
with anxieties which had their origin in the general turmoil
and decay, I succumbed to the fierce fever. After some few
days of pain, and many of dreamy delirium replete with
ecstasy, the manifestations of which you mistook for pain,
while I longed but was impotent to undeceive you—after
some days there came upon me, as you have said, a breathless
and motionless torpor; and this was termed Death by
those who stood around me.

Words are vague things. My condition did not deprive me of
sentience. It appeared to me not greatly dissimilar to the
extreme quiescence of him, who, having slumbered long and
profoundly, lying motionless and fully prostrate in a mid-
summer noon, begins to steal slowly back into consciousness,
through the mere sufficiency of his sleep, and without being
awakened by external disturbances.

I breathed no longer. The pulses were still. The heart had
ceased to beat. Volition had not departed, but was
powerless. The senses were unusually active, although
eccentrically so—assuming often each other’s functions
at random. The taste and the smell were inextricably
confounded, and became one sentiment, abnormal and intense.
The rose-water with which your tenderness had moistened my
lips to the last, affected me with sweet fancies of
flowers—fantastic flowers, far more lovely than any of
the old Earth, but whose prototypes we have here blooming
around us. The eye-lids, transparent and bloodless, offered
no complete impediment to vision. As volition was in
abeyance, the ***** could not roll in their sockets—
but all objects within the range of the visual hemisphere
were seen with more or less distinctness; the rays which
fell upon the external retina, or into the corner of the
eye, producing a more vivid effect than those which struck
the front or interior surface. Yet, in the former instance,
this effect was so far anomalous that I appreciated it only
as sound—sound sweet or discordant as the
matters presenting themselves at my side were light or dark
in shade—curved or angular in outline. The hearing, at
the same time, although excited in degree, was not irregular
in action—estimating real sounds with an extravagance
of precision, not less than of sensibility. Touch had
undergone a modification more peculiar. Its impressions were
tardily received, but pertinaciously retained, and resulted
always in the highest physical pleasure. Thus the pressure
of your sweet fingers upon my eyelids, at first only
recognized through vision, at length, long after their
removal, filled my whole being with a sensual delight
immeasurable. I say with a sensual delight. All my
perceptions were purely sensual. The materials furnished the
passive brain by the senses were not in the least degree
wrought into shape by the deceased understanding. Of pain
there was some little; of pleasure there was much; but of
moral pain or pleasure none at all. Thus your wild sobs
floated into my ear with all their mournful cadences, and
were appreciated in their every variation of sad tone; but
they were soft musical sounds and no more; they conveyed to
the extinct reason no intimation of the sorrows which gave
them birth; while large and constant tears which fell upon
my face, telling the bystanders of a heart which broke,
thrilled every fibre of my frame with ecstasy alone. And
this was in truth the Death of which these bystanders
spoke reverently, in low whispers—you, sweet Una,
gaspingly, with loud cries.

They attired me for the coffin—three or four dark
figures which flitted busily to and fro. As these crossed
the direct line of my vision they affected me as forms;
but upon passing to my side their images impressed me
with the idea of shrieks, groans, and, other dismal
expressions of terror, of horror, or of woe. You alone,
habited in a white robe, passed in all directions musically
about.

The day waned; and, as its light faded away, I became
possessed by a vague uneasiness—an anxiety such as the
sleeper feels when sad real sounds fall continuously within
his ear—low distant bell-tones, solemn, at long but
equal intervals, and commingling with melancholy dreams.
Night arrived; and with its shadows a heavy discomfort. It
oppressed my limbs with the oppression of some dull weight,
and was palpable. There was also a moaning sound, not unlike
the distant reverberation of surf, but more continuous,
which, beginning with the first twilight, had grown in
strength with the darkness. Suddenly lights were brought
into the rooms, and this reverberation became forthwith
interrupted into frequent unequal bursts of the same sound,
but less dreary and less distinct. The ponderous oppression
was in a great measure relieved; and, issuing from the flame
of each lamp (for there were many), there flowed unbrokenly
into my ears a strain of melodious monotone. And when now,
dear Una, approaching the bed upon which I lay outstretched,
you sat gently by my side, breathing odor from your sweet
lips, and pressing them upon my brow, there arose
tremulously within my *****, and mingling with the merely
physical sensations which circumstances had called forth, a
something akin to sentiment itself—a feeling that,
half appreciating, half responded to your earnest love and
sorrow; but this feeling took no root in the pulseless
heart, and seemed indeed rather a shadow than a reality, and
faded quickly away, first into extreme quiescence, and then
into a purely sensual pleasure as before.

And now, from the wreck and the chaos of the usual senses,
there appeared to have arisen within me a sixth, all
perfect. In its exercise I found a wild delight—yet a
delight still physical, inasmuch as the understanding had in
it no part. Motion in the animal frame had fully ceased. No
muscle quivered; no nerve thrilled; no artery throbbed. But
there seemed to have sprung up in the brain that of
which no words could convey to the merely human intelligence
even an indistinct conception. Let me term it a mental
pendulous pulsation. It was the moral embodiment of man’s
abstract idea of Time. By the absolute equalization
of this movement—or of such as this—had the
cycles of the firmamental orbs themselves been adjusted. By
its aid I measured the irregularities of the clock upon the
mantel, and of the watches of the attendants. Their tickings
came sonorously to my ears. The slightest deviations from
the true proportion—and these deviations were
omniprevalent—affected me just as violations of
abstract truth were wont on earth to affect the moral sense.
Although no two of the timepieces in the chamber struck the
individual seconds accurately together, yet I had no
difficulty in holding steadily in mind the tones, and the
respective momentary errors of each. And this—this
keen, perfect self-existing sentiment of
duration—this sentiment existing (as man could
not possibly have conceived it to exist) independently of
any succession of events—this idea—this sixth
sense, upspringing from the ashes of the rest, was the first
obvious and certain step of the intemporal soul upon the
threshold of the temporal eternity.

It was midnight; and you still sat by my side. All others
had departed from the chamber of Death. They had deposited
me in the coffin. The lamps burned flickeringly; for this I
knew by the tremulousness of the monotonous strains. But
suddenly these strains diminished in distinctness and in
volume. Finally they ceased. The perfume in my nostrils died
aw

Upon his glottal’s larynx spreads a lingual deformity. Isolation as a result from tuggo disaffiliates. Misshapen promontory in the direction of upper-body inflammation. Not only above torso alone, location;head/injury;mouth/main informative;tongue.
The boy’s tongue was permanently horned. A horn of 18 inches shy, where taste buds formulate, he owned a lone spike. He wasn’t abraded by the unfoldment of onlookers around. His irregular attachment was a main confidant. Criticized, he was not welcomed by towns near. Citizen’s were baffled and disgusted, ridiculing him daily, he did not impale with grieve over appearance. Enmity he wanted and craved. Among the works of flesh, square inch niches, repugnance revealed. Revenge, revenge. Vindictive spirit shelled so timely and calm. Remaining this state of sumptuous integrity made him stronger each go about. These goes were so stimulus, adding to the *** of hatred. Deep into the tundra’s most vile he intruded. Went so every month or few, for weeks at a time. For this sheet of rigid earth so contiguous to the town made the worried weary, the skeptical seared, and the nautical not so knitted with directional sense. This was his consummation of gathering. The place of being a being. The dry winter amid eight months was restricted, so the moment a due mustn’t be bothered. He had his reason of validness for course. A rich succulent from the bearings of plant life on cliffs. Repelling an obstacle such as was ludicrous for even one born the ever so adequate and society defined norm. Now having a tongue with a horn, some sought might as well die to be reborn. He had to, to stay alive. The liquid, which sit so treacherous, was the mold to mouth medicine. To speak at all it must be attained. Not only a curdling death trap waiting to swallow, the boy had to get a plentiful amount for the hard hitting winters collied. His tongue could swell like the storms, loud crimson on the esophagus. To die of asphyxiation was his dodge of ultimatum.
While passing by a local television in a thrift shop-
“Today’s Newscast: Blizzards, moving in at speeds of 94 mph. Predicted to cover like a blanket for 12 months. Ice Age relative people, this one is gonna be big! Stay indoors at night, the barometric’s indicate that from 9PM to 4AM temperatures as low as 28- will stouten for the next year. Once again people, stay indoors at these hours, get your needs when available. Back to you Ronda with the quintuplets birth today!”
Plucked and grit witted he stood. He felt the trepidation of abhorrence swaying in orbit around him. How to emanate from this delay? At least five clones of self did not exist for him. Merriment struct pro, while the cons derived from which they know. Exultation when despondent, how greatly that gift could gab. Despoilment of that, he weighed options out. To altercate thick snow or simply, let it go. Afraid to die unrivaled, the off cutting is wisest. Since his first second to now he’s flourished with his horn. Obliteration to the occulted manifestation mannered as an antique replica of anyone catching him by twice by day. Remove it, remove it, remove if you want life in your years that follow. Remove it, ever so. Remove it, cut and sew. Cut and sew. Remove.
This plateau poisoned place stay calm, anticipating climate of tempest bold reaches, anyone who was anyone was not so. Negative degrees. How could he retaliate the opposite, while acquiring a surgeon field hay day buck builder? Eruption turns the wave of cons. An only equal precision, deciding, tonight is the night. To assemble the tools, publicly was questionable, no more, through. He will emerge to the lands and people a new man, sustained, and hornless. No more. From scratch he will vender what’s needed. Wood was chiseled under the last moon viewed for three sixty three days ahead. Uprooted vines of old pine will hold the bark tight. Breath revealing around the outsides of his appendage. Like a fork in the road, which way can you go, for him air strides both. Scuffling fearful towards the pike of the tundra, he is where wanted by none. A be all end all as you could alleviate ones slightest sympathy, the courage it takes, ****** immense. His sweat was not seen, but there it consists. One hand grappled around his earthly dagger, tongue positioned in an outward arrangement. Travail glowing all over him as an aura unlanguid with no disruption veering. Abound now, without great weight on his shoulders, he’s lived. Ascending keen eyes towards the blood bath around his feet, going both ways around the fork and road. After relinquishing his steady gavel, the checking of his pulse is counted. 5, 6, 7, 8, seconds, still life to live. For the very first ritual to come, placed in his mouth, the tongue. The rigid roof so unfamiliar and new he bestowed in his joy of such a common flank. The tundra felt warm as he inside let over pour. Once more a milder gasp as he vociferates to the last moon for the year. On his peak, and favored place of being, he let out his tongue. Sharp inclement so hawkish and frosted he felt. The lilliputian of no pain, heeded by first snow to wane.

She'd swooshed by on her skates.
He'd seen her in her reflection that day
On his car’s rear view mirror,
For the first time ever.
The new neighbour, was she?

That very night, for the first time ever,
Both happened to be on their respective rooftops.
The clock had just scaled eleven.
Now that they’d seen each other,
Tonight's coincidence sufficed to make way
For a rendezvous every night, thereafter.

He’d often be smiling his sheepish smile,
Panting for breath as he’d reach the terrace
While the clock would strike eleven,
A few heartbeats later.
Oh, but she would often already be there,
A teasing laughter on her lips,
A childlike smile in her eyes.
Relief followed by exultation in his heart.

And so, they’d be standing a lane's length apart,
United under the zoetic starry sky, every night hence.

You’d wonder, how both were somehow convinced,
That the other still believed
This nightly tryst
Under the sky's roof to be a coincidence.

She'd light cigarette after another.
He'd pretend
To be caressing his pet,
Fast asleep.
Or some such silly thing.

How he’d wish the whiff of smoke from her cigarette
Would drift across to his terrace.
He’d imagine the wafting smoke
That’d emanate as she’d part her lips
To be a peek into her coy desires.
And many such cheesy things.

They hadn't exchanged a word till date.
Oh but they'd exchanged hearts that very first night.
She didn't even know his name yet
She'd wonder if he knew hers’?
'Has it ever mattered?' she'd think.
'I'm better off not knowing her name!'
Thinking a name could define her
Is to be silly', he’d think.

She was at his door one evening,
To hand over a letter,
Mistakenly delivered at her home.
Or so she said. Something he'd happily believed.
She'd slipped her heart along with the letter,
She later happily realized.

The ensuing night lingered
Six and a half cigarettes longer,
The first time ever.

Fifteen evenings gone by since
She wouldn’t be seen.
He stayed for a brief bit on the sixteenth night.
Disappointed less, worried more.
Did she feel this silent encounter
Of their worlds had stayed silent too long?
Words could never suffice, didn't she know?
He went down to his room ruefully.
Oh but she’d reached just the terrace at that instant.

And they thought coincidences could only always favor them.

A few evenings later he saw her.
Not veiled by the sepia-tinted street lights this time.
Nor in the crimson blush of that evening.
Decked in bridal finery
The vermilion vows on her forehead
Staring starkly at him like an exclamation mark.

And you thought coincidences could only always favor us,
Seemed to be the rhetoric she was throwing at him.

That night, his tattered heart
Writhed in dead wakefulness on the rooftop.
Even now, he looks across
At her absence, a presence in itself.

From pent-up aching rivers,
From that of myself without which I were nothing,
From what I am determin’d to make illustrious, even if I stand sole
   among men,
From my own voice resonant, singing the phallus,
Singing the song of procreation,
Singing the need of superb children and therein superb grown people,
Singing the muscular urge and the blending,
Singing the bedfellow’s song, (O resistless yearning!
O for any and each the body correlative attracting!
O for you whoever you are your correlative body! O it, more than all
   else, you delighting!)
From the hungry gnaw that eats me night and day,
From native moments, from bashful pains, singing them,
Seeking something yet unfound though I have diligently sought it
   many a long year,
Singing the true song of the soul fitful at random,
Renascent with grossest Nature or among animals,
Of that, of them and what goes with them my poems informing,
Of the smell of apples and lemons, of the pairing of birds,
Of the wet of woods, of the lapping of waves,
Of the mad pushes of waves upon the land, I them chanting,
The overture lightly sounding, the strain anticipating,
The welcome nearness, the sight of the perfect body,
The swimmer swimming naked in the bath, or motionless on his back
   lying and floating,
The female form approaching, I pensive, love-flesh tremulous aching,
The divine list for myself or you or for any one making,
The face, the limbs, the index from head to foot, and what it
   arouses,
The mystic deliria, the madness amorous, the utter abandonment,
(Hark close and still what I now whisper to you,
I love you, O you entirely possess me,
O that you and I escape from the rest and go utterly off, free and
   lawless,
Two hawks in the air, two fishes swimming in the sea not more
   lawless than we;)
The furious storm through me careering, I passionately trembling.
The oath of the inseparableness of two together, of the woman that
   loves me and whom I love more than my life, that oath swearing,
(O I willingly stake all for you,
O let me be lost if it must be so!
O you and I! what is it to us what the rest do or think?
What is all else to us? only that we enjoy each other and exhaust
   each other if it must be so;)
From the master, the pilot I yield the vessel to,
The general commanding me, commanding all, from him permission
   taking,
From time the programme hastening, (I have loiter’d too long as it
   is,)
From ***, from the warp and from the woof,
From privacy, from frequent repinings alone,
From plenty of persons near and yet the right person not near,
From the soft sliding of hands over me and thrusting of fingers
   through my hair and beard,
From the long sustain’d kiss upon the mouth or *****,
From the close pressure that makes me or any man drunk, fainting
   with excess,
From what the divine husband knows, from the work of fatherhood,
From exultation, victory and relief, from the bedfellow’s embrace in
   the night,
From the act-poems of eyes, hands, hips and bosoms,
From the cling of the trembling arm,
From the bending curve and the clinch,
From side by side the pliant coverlet off-throwing,
From the one so unwilling to have me leave, and me just as unwilling
   to leave,
(Yet a moment O tender waiter, and I return,)
From the hour of shining stars and dropping dews,
From the night a moment I emerging flitting out,
Celebrate you act divine and you children prepared for,
And you stalwart *****.

This might not be deep enough for you, but I still need to tell you.
You have the lips of a goddess and I long to kiss them
And I want you to know
I hear you, that quiet shudder you make as you feel my breath on your neck
I see you, clenching your teeth as my fingers delicately dance on precious skin
I feel you, one hand on the side of the bed, the other reaching and holding on for dear life to my chest.
If you only knew how much I wanted you.
I want to make love to you like I have OCD- I won't stop until it's perfect.
I want to make love to you like I'm in love with you
I want to make love to you like you are my best friend
I want to make love to you like we were complete strangers, who met each other for the first time at some random college party in the Caribbean
But we thought to ourselves, "****, I will die an unhappy person if I don't make love to you".
And maybe I'm wrong for that
But tell me why every time I close my eyes, it is your hands I feel in my back; your inarticulate moans starting to sound like A Love Supreme and My Favorite Things.
Let me kiss you at the sixteenth minute and fifty-two second mark of Around the Midnight.
I want to take in every inch of your body, savor the taste of the gourmet that is your back, your neck and your la belle chatte.
Vamos a la mierda y ver como el ciedo de la noche empieza a sangrar la luz del sol.
And wake in the morning thinking every night with you is a love story worth telling the world.
So I am.
Physical ******* that results in spiritual exultation is what we share.
I want you in ways my mind can't tell my mouth what to say, that's why every time before we make love, I tend to stare at you first.
Engulfing the structure of your body and envisioning the ways I shall go about pleasing it.
My bedroom walls, the floor, the bed, everything else becomes glass when I'm inside you.
We become the solstice to each other's world
Time turns into the finest Egyptian velvet that envelops us.
I hear Nefertari's screams of fulfillment every time I go deeper into the story.
You are the definition of a Beautiful Companion, so let me be your pharaoh.
The ****** omniscience of you is what I desire
So I humbly ask you, to give it to me, slowly
For every second I have with you is **** near perfect
It's Euphoric.

-SFJ

Hammers on heartstrings,
And I wish to tell you of their
Sound.

Lo, how each chime rolls
Or taps the surface of the air,
Each an exultation of depression,
Creation.

Eyes sting with salt, wetted with
What has been – the foolish enterprise
Of my words. These notes, they
Scale the patterns of my life.
Pure emotion.

Inexpressible.

Hammers on heartstrings,
They fill the emptied rooms with
Sound.

Lo, how each key sings.
Their voice naught in solitude,
Yet a celebration of life’s discourse in
Union.

Ears ring like a music box. Chopin’s
Soul in the spaces beyond time,
Touching mine. Our sorrows pastured
Green, laying life under the ground,
Tough fingerprints.

Hammers on heartstrings,
And I wish to tell you of their
Sound.

Lo, how they still my jittered soul.

Lo, how I accept the drizzle,
The arrival of autumn
At my window.

1153

Through what transports of Patience
I reached the stolid Bliss
To breathe my Blank without thee
Attest me this and this—
By that bleak exultation
I won as near as this
Thy privilege of dying
Abbreviate me this—

(Reply of the Pythian Oracle to Philip of Macedon.)


Oh! could LE SAGE’S demon’s gift
  Be realis’d at my desire,
This night my trembling form he’d lift
  To place it on St. Mary’s spire.

Then would, unroof’d, old Granta’s halls,
  Pedantic inmates full display;
Fellows who dream on lawn or stalls,
  The price of venal votes to pay.

Then would I view each rival wight,
  PETTY and PALMERSTON survey;
Who canvass there, with all their might,
  Against the next elective day.

Lo! candidates and voters lie
  All lull’d in sleep, a goodly number!
A race renown’d for piety,
  Whose conscience won’t disturb their slumber.

Lord H—indeed, may not demur;
  Fellows are sage, reflecting men:
They know preferment can occur,
  But very seldom,—now and then.

They know the Chancellor has got
  Some pretty livings in disposal:
Each hopes that one may be his lot,
  And, therefore, smiles on his proposal.

Now from the soporific scene
  I’ll turn mine eye, as night grows later,
To view, unheeded and unseen,
  The studious sons of Alma Mater.

There, in apartments small and damp,
  The candidate for college prizes,
Sits poring by the midnight lamp;
  Goes late to bed, yet early rises.
He surely well deserves to gain them,
  With all the honours of his college,
Who, striving hardly to obtain them,
  Thus seeks unprofitable knowledge:

Who sacrifices hours of rest,
  To scan precisely metres Attic;
Or agitates his anxious breast,
  In solving problems mathematic:

Who reads false quantities in Seale,
  Or puzzles o’er the deep triangle;
Depriv’d of many a wholesome meal;
  In barbarous Latin doom’d to wrangle:

Renouncing every pleasing page,
  From authors of historic use;
Preferring to the letter’d sage,
  The square of the hypothenuse.

Still, harmless are these occupations,
That hurt none but the hapless student,
Compar’d with other recreations,
Which bring together the imprudent;

Whose daring revels shock the sight,
When vice and infamy combine,
When Drunkenness and dice invite,
As every sense is steep’d in wine.

Not so the methodistic crew,
Who plans of reformation lay:
In humble attitude they sue,
And for the sins of others pray:

Forgetting that their pride of spirit,
Their exultation in their trial,
Detracts most largely from the merit
Of all their boasted self-denial.

’Tis morn:—from these I turn my sight:
What scene is this which meets the eye?
A numerous crowd array’d in white,
Across the green in numbers fly.

Loud rings in air the chapel bell;
’Tis hush’d:—what sounds are these I hear?
The *****’s soft celestial swell
Rolls deeply on the listening ear.

To this is join’d the sacred song,
The royal minstrel’s hallow’d strain;
Though he who hears the music long,
Will never wish to hear again.

Our choir would scarcely be excus’d,
E’en as a band of raw beginners;
All mercy, now, must be refus’d
To such a set of croaking sinners.

If David, when his toils were ended,
Had heard these blockheads sing before him,
To us his psalms had ne’er descended,—
In furious mood he would have tore ’em.

The luckless Israelites, when taken
By some inhuman tyrant’s order,
Were ask’d to sing, by joy forsaken,
On Babylonian river’s border.

Oh! had they sung in notes like these
Inspir’d by stratagem or fear,
They might have set their hearts at ease,
The devil a soul had stay’d to hear.

But if I scribble longer now,
The deuce a soul will stay to read;
My pen is blunt, my ink is low;
’Tis almost time to stop, indeed.

Therefore, farewell, old Granta’s spires!
No more, like Cleofas, I fly;
No more thy theme my Muse inspires:
The reader’s tir’d, and so am I.

Shepherd. That cry's from the first cuckoo of the year.
I wished before it ceased.
Goatherd. Nor bird nor beast
Could make me wish for anything this day,
Being old, but that the old alone might die,
And that would be against God's providence.
Let the young wish.  But what has brought you here?
Never until this moment have we met
Where my goats browse on the scarce grass or leap
From stone to Stone.
Shepherd. I am looking for strayed sheep;
Something has troubled me and in my rrouble
I let them stray.  I thought of rhyme alone,
For rhme can beat a measure out of trouble
And make the daylight sweet once more; but when
I had driven every rhyme into its Place
The sheep had gone from theirs.
Goatherd. I know right well
What turned so good a shepherd from his charge.
Shepherd. He that was best in every country sport
And every country craft, and of us all
Most courteous to slow age and hasty youth,
Is dead.
Goatherd. The boy that brings my griddle-cake
Brought the bare news.
Shepherd. He had thrown the crook away
And died in the great war beyond the sea.
Goatherd. He had often played his pipes among my hills,
And when he played it was their loneliness,
The exultation of their stone, that died
Under his fingers.
Shepherd. I had it from his mother,
And his own flock was browsing at the door.
Goatherd. How does she bear her grief? There is not a
shepherd
But grows more gentle when he speaks her name,
Remembering kindness done, and how can I,
That found when I had neither goat nor grazing
New welcome and old wisdom at her fire
Till winter blasts were gone, but speak of her
Even before his children and his wife?
Shepherd. She goes about her house ***** and calm
Between the pantry and the linen-chest,
Or else at meadow or at grazing overlooks
Her labouring men, as though her darling lived,
But for her grandson now; there is no change
But such as I have Seen upon her face
Watching our shepherd sports at harvest-time
When her son's turn was over.
Goatherd. Sing your song.
I too have rhymed my reveries, but youth
Is hot to show whatever it has found,
And till that's done can neither work nor wait.
Old goatherds and old goats, if in all else
Youth can excel them in accomplishment,
Are learned in waiting.
Shepherd. You cannot but have seen
That he alone had gathered up no gear,
Set carpenters to work on no wide table,
On no long bench nor lofty milking-shed
As others will, when first they take possession,
But left the house as in his father's time
As though he knew himself, as it were, a cuckoo,
No settled man.  And now that he is gone
There's nothing of him left but half a score
Of sorrowful, austere, sweet, lofty pipe tunes.
Goatherd. You have put the thought in rhyme.
Shepherd. I worked all day,
And when 'twas done so little had I done
That maybe "I am sorry' in plain prose
Had Sounded better to your mountain fancy.
[He sings.]
"Like the speckled bird that steers
Thousands of leagues oversea,
And runs or a while half-flies
On his yellow legs through our meadows.
He stayed for a while; and we
Had scarcely accustomed our ears
To his speech at the break of day,
Had scarcely accustomed our eyes
To his shape at the rinsing-pool
Among the evening shadows,
When he vanished from ears and eyes.
I might have wished on the day
He came, but man is a fool.'
Goatherd. You sing as always of the natural life,
And I that made like music in my youth
Hearing it now have sighed for that young man
And certain lost companions of my own.
Shepherd. They say that on your barren mountain ridge
You have measured out the road that the soul treads
When it has vanished from our natural eyes;
That you have talked with apparitions.
Goatherd. Indeed
My daily thoughts since the first stupor of youth
Have found the path my goats' feet cannot find.
Shepherd. Sing, for it may be that your thoughts have
plucked
Some medicable herb to make our grief
Less bitter.
Goatherd. They have brought me from that ridge
Seed-pods and flowers that are not all wild poppy.
[Sings.]
"He grows younger every second
That were all his birthdays reckoned
Much too solemn seemed;
Because of what he had dreamed,
Or the ambitions that he served,
Much too solemn and reserved.
Jaunting, journeying
To his own dayspring,
He unpacks the loaded pern
Of all 'twas pain or joy to learn,
Of all that he had made.
The outrageous war shall fade;
At some old winding whitethorn root
He'll practise on the shepherd's flute,
Or on the close-cropped grass
Court his shepherd lass,
Or put his heart into some game
Till daytime, playtime seem the same;
Knowledge he shall unwind
Through victories of the mind,
Till, clambering at the cradle-side,
He dreams himself hsi mother's pride,
All knowledge lost in trance
Of sweeter ignorance.'
Shepherd. When I have shut these ewes and this old ram
Into the fold, we'll to the woods and there
Cut out our rhymes on strips of new-torn bark
But put no name and leave them at her door.
To know the mountain and the valley have grieved
May be a quiet thought to wife and mother,
And children when they spring up shoulder-high.

Shepherd. That cry's from the first cuckoo of the year.
I wished before it ceased.

Goatherd.              Nor bird nor beast
Could make me wish for anything this day,
Being old, but that the old alone might die,
And that would be against God's providence.
Let the young wish.  But what has brought you here?
Never until this moment have we met
Where my goats browse on the scarce grass or leap
From stone to Stone.

Shepherd.         I am looking for strayed sheep;
Something has troubled me and in my rrouble
I let them stray.  I thought of rhyme alone,
For rhme can beat a measure out of trouble
And make the daylight sweet once more; but when
I had driven every rhyme into its Place
The sheep had gone from theirs.

Goatherd.                   I know right well
What turned so good a shepherd from his charge.

Shepherd. He that was best in every country sport
And every country craft, and of us all
Most courteous to slow age and hasty youth,
Is dead.

Goatherd. The boy that brings my griddle-cake
Brought the bare news.

Shepherd. He had thrown the crook away
And died in the great war beyond the sea.

Goatherd. He had often played his pipes among my hills,
And when he played it was their loneliness,
The exultation of their stone, that died
Under his fingers.

Shepherd.    I had it from his mother,
And his own flock was browsing at the door.

Goatherd. How does she bear her grief? There is not a
     shepherd
But grows more gentle when he speaks her name,
Remembering kindness done, and how can I,
That found when I had neither goat nor grazing
New welcome and old wisdom at her fire
Till winter blasts were gone, but speak of her
Even before his children and his wife?

Shepherd. She goes about her house ***** and calm
Between the pantry and the linen-chest,
Or else at meadow or at grazing overlooks
Her labouring men, as though her darling lived,
But for her grandson now; there is no change
But such as I have Seen upon her face
Watching our shepherd sports at harvest-time
When her son's turn was over.

Goatherd.              Sing your song.
I too have rhymed my reveries, but youth
Is hot to show whatever it has found,
And till that's done can neither work nor wait.
Old goatherds and old goats, if in all else
Youth can excel them in accomplishment,
Are learned in waiting.

Shepherd. You cannot but have seen
That he alone had gathered up no gear,
Set carpenters to work on no wide table,
On no long bench nor lofty milking-shed
As others will, when first they take possession,
But left the house as in his father's time
As though he knew himself, as it were, a cuckoo,
No settled man.  And now that he is gone
There's nothing of him left but half a score
Of sorrowful, austere, sweet, lofty pipe tunes.

Goatherd. You have put the thought in rhyme.

Shepherd.              I worked all day,
And when 'twas done so little had I done
That maybe "I am sorry' in plain prose
Had Sounded better to your mountain fancy.

                              [He sings.]

"Like the speckled bird that steers
Thousands of leagues oversea,
And runs or a while half-flies
On his yellow legs through our meadows.
He stayed for a while; and we
Had scarcely accustomed our ears
To his speech at the break of day,
Had scarcely accustomed our eyes
To his shape at the rinsing-pool
Among the evening shadows,
When he vanished from ears and eyes.
I might have wished on the day
He came, but man is a fool.'

Goatherd. You sing as always of the natural life,
And I that made like music in my youth
Hearing it now have sighed for that young man
And certain lost companions of my own.

Shepherd. They say that on your barren mountain ridge
You have measured out the road that the soul treads
When it has vanished from our natural eyes;
That you have talked with apparitions.

Goatherd.                        Indeed
My daily thoughts since the first stupor of youth
Have found the path my goats' feet cannot find.

Shepherd. Sing, for it may be that your thoughts have
     plucked
Some medicable herb to make our grief
Less bitter.

Goatherd.    They have brought me from that ridge
Seed-pods and flowers that are not all wild poppy.

                              [Sings.]

"He grows younger every second
That were all his birthdays reckoned
Much too solemn seemed;
Because of what he had dreamed,
Or the ambitions that he served,
Much too solemn and reserved.
Jaunting, journeying
To his own dayspring,
He unpacks the loaded pern
Of all 'twas pain or joy to learn,
Of all that he had made.
The outrageous war shall fade;
At some old winding whitethorn root
He'll practise on the shepherd's flute,
Or on the close-cropped grass
Court his shepherd lass,
Or put his heart into some game
Till daytime, playtime seem the same;
Knowledge he shall unwind
Through victories of the mind,
Till, clambering at the cradle-side,
He dreams himself hsi mother's pride,
All knowledge lost in trance
Of sweeter ignorance.'

Shepherd. When I have shut these ewes and this old ram
Into the fold, we'll to the woods and there
Cut out our rhymes on strips of new-torn bark
But put no name and leave them at her door.
To know the mountain and the valley have grieved
May be a quiet thought to wife and mother,
And children when they spring up shoulder-high.

mystical conversation
intrusion on the convenant
between believer and air
impregnated by unwavering faith

o nata lux de lumine

a pattern that commands
with no physical body
but that of notes
fed by black blood

o nata lux de lumine

in exultation revered
in sacrosanct fear
assured, drawing near
eternally trapped in song


this light born of light

I, too, saw God through mud, -
       The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
       War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
       And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.


Merry it was to laugh there -
       Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.
       For power was on us as we slashed bones bare
       Not to feel sickness or remorse of ******.


I, too, have dropped off Fear -
       Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon,
       And sailed my spirit surging light and clear
       Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn;


And witnessed exultation -
       Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl,
       Shine and lift up with passion of oblation,
       Seraphic for an hour; though they were foul.


I have made fellowships -
       Untold of happy lovers in old song.
       For love is not the binding of fair lips
       With the soft silk of eyes that look and long,


By Joy, whose ribbon slips, -
       But wound with war's hard wire whose stakes are strong;
       Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips;
       Knit in the webbing of the rifle-thong.


I have perceived much beauty
       In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;
       Heard music in the silentness of duty;
       Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.


Nevertheless, except you share
       With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell,
       Whose world is but the trembling of a flare
       And heaven but as the highway for a shell,


You shall not hear their mirth:
       You shall not come to think them well content
       By any jest of mine. These men are worth
       Your tears. You are not worth their merriment.

In a frenzy
of exultation,
I found my submissive
prostrating before your
dominance,
considering you a master
entwining under the spirals
of your manliness.
I feel that I should
sing the psalms of
your manhood
to dangle my soul
to your body and
your soul to mine
prairie of captivity
welcoming me via
an orifice of your
supremacy.

Curling upward like the smoke from a cigarette with lipstick
Emblazoned on the filter like a ruby on a ring.
Spiraling like vapour on a freezing frosty morning
Where the air is still and foggy, where the early blackbirds sing.

A maddening moment spinning in my flower's ****** youth
When I kissed those lips of tangerine to feel that heat ingrained.
And from the depths of ocean green that Kingfish rose to greet me,
Her beauty smeared by spear impaled in a deed that leaves me shamed.

Tendrils of thought arise entwining in the cortex
And the pleasure of sensation is my measure of delight,
Like the rising mist of lakeside in the golden shades of evening,
Of anticipating starlight in the jewelled descending night.

The rendevouzed excitement of ascention with the heartbeat
As a beauty glides unadorned through a moment in my life,
But the spiraled exultation of a lifetime's realisation
was the coil of breathless wonder sharing childbirth with my wife.

And the years, they pass asunder in a steady haze of flickering
Passing in succession, in a honey scented way.
Contented are my days in the muted shades of harmony
In the shady lanes of country in a sunlit green array.

Marshalg
Pukehana Paradise
10 August 2013

All silent in the months of grace
When frosty blankets fall across the hills
And fields where birds once sang their verse,
But melody of wind is all we know.
These lands to die are not yet dead
Though bee does mourn for blooms and for himself
When beetle joints go stiff with cold --
When funerary twilight season comes
To ***** the days. The final wren
Now senses slipping of the year, and so
Of tenant hill and glen deprived
Set in for sleep. If never to awake --
To never feel a verdant joy
Or exultation of the orb that breathes
Bright life into our skies -- at least
Released from hardships and her sorrows be.
But she has faith, she loves the sun!
The twinkling of his eye will come in May
Or else with April's gown he'll march:
Believing in her lover's rising light
The dream that takes her through the night.
Not far, a sickly naiad's wood
In seasons past so fair of face and leaf,
Yet creeping forest's yellowing
Like fingernails of corpse when skin recedes.
But then blush orange sanguinate:
The lover's sigh ignites when dies the vine,
Their bubbling veins in praise of life
When soonest to be severed by cruel scythe.

This phantom of their fate is grim,
More grim be sure than fate that falls in death:
The slings and arrows of the mind
Are those most potent poisoned, fear them not --
Illusory as winter's chill
That peels off maiden's wedding veil in spring:
A peaceful rest does come to all
Though private troubles drown the trees through fall.

Unthinking sleep does bliss the boughs,
In hibernation lose to learn anew
The sights proved true by waking world
That are the growing season's cause to feel.
When browns the brush and flies the thrush
Unanchored Daphne nods and starts to drift
In sea where beings dream as one.
Soft blizzard quilt on woods in slumber laid,
Demeter's daughter vanished into shade,
With knowledge that she'll never fade.

How shall my animal
Whose wizard shape I trace in the cavernous skull,
Vessel of abscesses and exultation's shell,
Endure burial under the spelling wall,
The invoked, shrouding veil at the cap of the face,
Who should be furious,
Drunk as a vineyard snail, flailed like an octopus,
Roaring, crawling, quarrel
With the outside weathers,
The natural circle of the discovered skies
Draw down to its weird eyes?

How shall it magnetize,
Towards the studded male in a bent, midnight blaze
That melts the lionhead's heel and horseshoe of the heart
A brute land in the cool top of the country days
To trot with a loud mate the haybeds of a mile,
Love and labour and ****
In quick, sweet, cruel light till the locked ground sprout
The black, burst sea rejoice,
The bowels turn turtle,
Claw of the crabbed veins squeeze from each red particle
The parched and raging voice?

Fishermen of mermen
Creep and harp on the tide, sinking their charmed, bent pin
With bridebait of gold bread, I with a living skein,
Tongue and ear in the thread, angle the temple-bound
Curl-locked and animal cavepools of spells and bone,
Trace out a tentacle,
Nailed with an open eye, in the bowl of wounds and ****
To clasp my fury on ground
And clap its great blood down;
Never shall beast be born to atlas the few seas
Or poise the day on a horn.

Sigh long, clay cold, lie shorn,
Cast high, stunned on gilled stone; sly scissors ground in frost
Clack through the thicket of strength, love hewn in pillars drops
With carved bird, saint, and suns the wrackspiked maiden mouth
Lops, as a bush plumed with flames, the rant of the fierce eye,
Clips short the gesture of breath.
Die in red feathers when the flying heaven's cut,
And roll with the knocked earth:
Lie dry, rest robbed, my beast.
You have kicked from a dark den, leaped up the whinnying light,
And dug your grave in my breast.

Flies swarm when the floodlights come on.
They **** and they fight, live and die.
In the space of an hour
turf becomes a bed of glass wings-
none are left
straining for the light.
It looks like a mass suicide.
Eggs hatch in the sweat of night.
Tachycardic at birth,
one brief exultation
enough to still the lung,
nullify the heart.
Yawn out of existence,
bullfrogs croak miserably
as bodies fall from the sky.
You ask me why I cannot sleep-
I saw a thousand deaths tonight.

Dear...
This haphazard poem was written solely for you
Matterless, what you came garbed in
Fever elicited, passion anew
You’ve graced me, the repetition of ‘could-have-been’
I loved the way you speak
Of knowledge and triumph
And I, bumbling and meek
Tirelessly I sought and now still seek
Your council, your court
For my amusement, for my sport
Conversing over a poisoned well
I listen in genuine
Raise my voice
Sing with my friends amongst the din
Higher on the pillar, you I hoist
Pure skin my well intentioned hands mar
Clumsily, I lean into a similar heart
To discuss life and literature, fantasies these hands take too far
How eloquent the silk you weave, which you impart
Which inveigles and entices, cajole us into the city
On pale page, the street lamps and dim moon, art
Palpitations and liquor test the pity
Of light and fire
I cannot help but explore your shapely form
And yet, without bar
Across miasma, my guide is a cute little hand
Solitude, the pulsations do doggedly solicit
I just want to be close, you grant this
Bewitched by the creamy satin of pale skin
Distantly, warmly, I gaze in those God-given sculptures
Of the richest green and azure hues, bespeak feminine
Engaged in the other’s stare, two drunken apers
The night, black as sin,
The mould of outcome of we are the shapers
And I shape regret that rises with the sun
You come back vividly and lucidly
Distant and opposite, worlds across, you from me
A nondescript ghost in the corner
Who speaks so placidly
I remember with regret
I remember with exultation
I’ve ruined our relationship
Our relationship topical felicitation
I haven’t had time to apologize
I haven’t had enough time with you
If I ever see you again
I’d mend everything
I’d discover the girl behind the name
And cleanse the projection askew.
Love, Me
Dear...                 .

The Barrister's Dream

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.
But the Barrister, weary of proving in vain
That the ******'s lace-making was wrong,
Fell asleep, and in dreams saw the creature quite plain
That his fancy had dwelt on so long.

He dreamed that he stood in a shadowy Court,
Where the Snark, with a glass in its eye,
Dressed in gown, bands, and wig, was defending a pig
On the charge of deserting its sty.

The Witnesses proved, without error or flaw,
That the sty was deserted when found:
And the Judge kept explaining the state of the law
In a soft under-current of sound.

The indictment had never been clearly expressed,
And it seemed that the Snark had begun,
And had spoken three hours, before any one guessed
What the pig was supposed to have done.

The Jury had each formed a different view
(Long before the indictment was read),
And they all spoke at once, so that none of them knew
One word that the others had said.

"You must know--" said the Judge: but the Snark exclaimed "Fudge!"
That statute is obsolete quite!
Let me tell you, my friends, the whole question depends
On an ancient manorial right.

"In the matter of Treason the pig would appear
To have aided, but scarcely abetted:
While the charge of Insolvency fails, it is clear,
If you grant the plea 'never indebted'.

"The fact of Desertion I will not dispute:
But its guilt, as I trust, is removed
(So far as relates to the costs of this suit)
By the Alibi which has been proved.

"My poor client's fate now depends on your votes."
Here the speaker sat down in his place,
And directed the Judge to refer to his notes
And briefly to sum up the case.

But the Judge said he never had summed up before;
So the Snark undertook it instead,
And summed it so well that it came to far more
Than the Witnesses ever had said!

When the verdict was called for, the Jury declined,
As the word was so puzzling to spell;
But they ventured to hope that the Snark wouldn't mind
Undertaking that duty as well.

So the Snark found the verdict, although, as it owned,
It was spent with the toils of the day:
When it said the word "GUILTY!" the Jury all groaned
And some of them fainted away.

Then the Snark pronounced sentence, the Judge being quite
Too nervous to utter a word:
When it rose to its feet, there was silence like night,
And the fall of a pin might be heard.

"Transportation for life" was the sentence it gave,
"And then to be fined forty pound."
The Jury all cheered, though the Judge said he feared
That the phrase was not legally sound.

But their wild exultation was suddenly checked
When the jailer informed them, with tears,
Such a sentence would not have the slightest effect,
As the pig had been dead for some years.

The Judge left the Court, looking deeply disgusted
But the Snark, though a little aghast,
As the lawyer to whom the defence was intrusted,
Went bellowing on to the last.

Thus the Barrister dreamed, while the bellowing seemed
To grow every moment more clear:
Till he woke to the knell of a furious bell,
Which the Bellman rang close at his ear.

PARTY ZONE WITH DAVE AND SUE JANUARY 3 2015







DAVID’     HI DUDES AND WELCOME TO PARTY ZONE, AND ON TODAY’S SHOW, WE ARE AT

THE AAA NITE CLUB, IN GAREMA PLACE, AND TONIGHT WE HAVE ENTERTAINMENT FROM

PETE NOWNEY, WHO IS PERFORMING AT AAA NIGHT CLUB, THEN SUE LONGWAYS

GETS A FEW OF THE CLUB’S PATRONS TO PERFORM A FEW DRINKING SONGS OF THEIR PAST

AND HERE IS SUE WITH ERNIE PIGFEST

SUE’,  HI I AM SUE LONGWAYS, AND WE HAVE A GREAT DRINKING GAME TO SING, OK ERNIE TAKE IT AWAY

ERNIE’   21 BOTTLES OF BOURBON ON THE WALL, AND A FULL BOTTLE OF SCOTCH

YOU BETTER GET YA COTTON PICKING HANDS OFF IT, OR I’LL PUNCH YOU IN THE GOB, AND MAKE YA A SNOB

YOU SEE DRINKING GAMES ARE SO MUCH FUN

YEAH, THEY ARE FUN, OH YEAH, YA SEE WE HAVE CHIPS AND BURGERS AS WELL

AND A NICE CAN OF BEER, OR JUG OF BEER, WHATEVER YA RECKON, MATE

IT’S GETTING CLOSE TO  HALF PAST EIGHT

SUE’   THANKS, ERNIE, AND HOP IN THE HOT TUB AND NOW HERE IS **** LEARY

****’  I LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT, I REALLY WANNA MOVE IT MOVE IT

I WANNA PARTY PARTY, AND I WANNA GET DRESSED UP AS A REAL SMARTIE

OH SLICK, YOUR A ****, YOU HAVE NO BRAINS, LIKE A REAL SPASTIC

I LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT, I LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT

I REALLY WANNA SHAKE MY THANG, I REALLY WANNA SHAKE MY THANG

I LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT I LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT

GO QUICK, YOUR A ****, YOUR A BRAINLESS TWIT WHO IS SPASTIC

I LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT, MOVE IT MOVE IT

I WANNA HEAD TO EVERY CLUB IN THE CANBERRA CBD

OH YEAH THIS IS THE TIME WHERE WE REALLY PARTY

COME ON GUYS, GET WIGGLY WITH IT GET JIGGLY WITH IT

I LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT I LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT

SUE’  THANKS AND NOW OVER TO, YO  DAVID AND HIS INTERVIEW WITH PETE NOWNEY, HERE GOES

DAVID’   OK THANKS AND NOW PETE, YOU HAVE JUST FINISHED YA GIG

AND YOU GOT A FEW PEOPLE DANCING ON THE FLOOR

AND I HAVE THIS LITTLE GIFT FOR YOU, IT IS THIS, HAVE A PEAK INSIDE

PETE’   YEAH, THIS IS WHAT I ALWAYS WANTED, A ***** DOLL

DAVID’   YEAH, BUT, IT’S NOT A ***** DOLL,

PETE’   NO, WHAT IS IT, SOME KIND OF TORTURE PRESENT FOR MY BIRTHDAY OR SUMMIT

DAVID’   NO, IT’S A ORDINARY DOLL, YOU ONCE TOLD ME, YOUR DAUGHTER LOVES DOLLS

SO I BROUGHT THIS IN TO SHOW YOU

PETE’  WELL, DAVID IT’S PRETTY RAD, I CAN GUARANTEE THAT MY DAUGHTER WILL LOVE IT

DAVID’   I NOTICED YOUR FIRST SONG, BEING THE LITTLE LOVE IN MY LIFE, IS THAT ABOUT YOUR DAUGHTER

PETE’    NO, AND YES, NO IT’’S NOT MY DAUGHTER, BUT IT’S ABOUT THE MOTHER OF MY DAUGHTER, YA SEE

WE MET ON THE SYDNEY HARBOUR BRIDGE, I NEARLY FELL IT WAS BAD, DUDE

DAVID’’     DID YOU GET TO SEE THEM ON CHRISTMAS

PETE’    YEAH, AND I HAVE MY DAUGHTER WITH ME, TO SING O COME ALL YE FAITHFUL, YA SEE EVERY YEAR

WE CHOOSE A CAROL TO SING, AND THIS YEAR, O COME ALL YE FAITHFUL, AND I KNOW IT’S JANUARY 3 2015

BUT I WOULD LOVE TO SING WITH MY DAUGHTER STEF, OK SHE IS 10 THIS YEAR

DAVID’   OK TAKE IT AWAY PETE AND STEF

PETE AND STEF’

O COME ALL YE FAITHFUL

JOYFUL AND TRIUMPHANT

O COME YE O COME YE

TO BETHLEHEM

O COME AND BEHOLD HIM

BORN THE KING OF ANGELS

O COME LET US ADORE HIM

O COME LET US ADORE HIM

O COME LET US ADORE HIM

IN CHRIST THE LORD

SING CHIORS OF ANGELS

SING IN EXULTATION

SING ALL YE CITIZENS OF HEAVEN ABOVE

GLORY TO GOD, IN THE HIGHEST

O COME LET US ADORE HIM

O COME LET US ADORE HIM

O COME LET US ADORE HIM

IN CHRIST THE LORD

DAVID’  STEF, YOU HAVE A WONDERFUL VOICE, ARE YOU

PLANNING TO GO ON AUSTRALIA’S GOT TALENT OR THE VOICE THIS YEAR

STEFF’   WELL, I WOULD BUT DADDY AT P.RESENT WANTS TO BE THE ONLY SINGER

IN THE FAMILY

DAVID’   OK THAT IS ALL, AND NOW OVER TO SUE, WITH ANOTHER DRINKING SONG

SUE’   OK HERE IS ANOTHER DRINKING SONG, FROM KENNETH

KEN’   I WOULD LOVE TO HAVE COCKTAILS WITH GORDON

YEAH, IT’LL BE FUN TO HAVE COCKTAILS WITH HIM

YA SEE DRINKING COCKTAILS WITH GORDON

IS WAY WAY BETTER THAN DRINKING WITH KIM

CAUSE KIM IS A BIT OF A *****, AND CRAZY TO BOOT

I  LOVE TO HAVE COCKTAILS WITH GORDON, AND SPEND ALL HIS LOOT

I WOULD LOVE TO HAVE A BEER WITH YOU, SUE

YEAH, I WOULD LOVE TO HAVE MANY BEERS WITH YOU

YA SEE SUE LONGWAYS, I REALLY ADMORED YA FROM A DISTANCE

AND WHEN YOU DRINK BEER AFTER YOUR 3RD OR 4TH

YA WILL LET OUT A MIGHTY BIG SPEW

IT WILL LOOK DISCUSTING, OH MAN, IT WILL OK

I WOULD LOVE TO HAVE A BEER WITH YOU SUE

CAUSE YOUR A TRUE DUDE

SUE’   THANKS KEN SEE YA NEXT WEEK, NOW HERE’S DAVID

DAVID’   OK, THANKS TO ALL OF OUR SONGSTARS AND PETE AND STEFF

AND THE OTHERS, SO SEE YA NEXT WEEK ON PARTY ZONE JANUARY 3

We took a bus to Wilmington
And skipped a dream or two
In order to be cognizant—
When the “Are we there yet’s”
Rebounded void of “yet.”

We parked the bus adjacent to
The paint-peeling facade
Of lonely temple Wilmington—
Threatening no demon of the sky
With a keenly polished death spike.

It had no spendthrift window of
Christ Jesus with the sick
And poor, neglected derelicts—
Who glow with jubilee and gold chloride
For His altruistic charities.

Across its door was fastened tight
A rusted iron chain
Which barred the shallow, blinkered souls—
Who loitered at the barrier’s feet
Waiting on God to warrant entry.

But we who were of cogent view
Detached deterring catch
And entered with our chins *****—
A light-bulb-vacant sanctuary
Where taciturn shadows took a seat in every pew.

And down a velvet aisle stood
A lonely, weeping priest
Inhaling in unblemished palms—
That not a single pious doubter
Would dare inspect.

“Welcome to my church,” he said
With breathless, choking sobs,
“I am the congregation here—
The pastor, choir, usher, and Sunday school teacher
Of Wilmington Church of Reason.”

Inquired we what hidden woe
Enlaced with torment cast
Those salt discharged convulsions—
Quaking the sanctity of exultation
In the House of Apollo.

And with concise, unleavened words
He justified his tears
And whispered to our weary troop—,
“Alone, alone am I,
Isolated within this box of omitted truth.

“O, give me soothing slumber deep
And strip these sentient eyes
From ghastly sheaths of consciousness—
Repair this mended paradigm,
Or tell me that I am mistaken.

“Imaginary friends and foes
Make wretched hearts a wreath
Of roses red and mistletoe—
And bird of paradise to keep
Hope alive, alive and awake and well, hope alive…”

So each of us, a brimming cup
Of empathy, remained
To keep old pastor Wilmington—
Old usher, choir, teacher, congregation Wilmington
Alive and awake and well.

The danger, the thrills, the risk, the chills,
It all combines in wave riding to build
The most euphoric experience around.

It doesn't matter whether it's ten-foot or two-foot,
Nor whether I'm body surfing, bodyboarding, nor surfing - longboard or short.
Hell, even a stand-up board will do the trick... if you know how to use it.
Whatever you've got to use to gain that thrill
That comes with harnessing Mother Nature, even against her will.

Some might be snobbish and frown upon those
Who happen to ride only upon the foam,
But in actuality it doesn't really matter
So long as you're out there having fun, because in the end,
That's truly the one who wins.

And to tell you the truth, I believe that's me.
Scratch that. I know I am.
When I am out there I know I am having the most fun.
I'm whooping and hollering and exuding the raw exultation of being in the water -
Of being at harmony, of being one with Mother Nature.

That, that is what matters, and
That, that is what I embody.

She is not of this world, no, not of this world at all:
She comes here on difficult visits
To this realm of deception enamoured of gratification
Like the moon reflected on the crest of a high wave:
Never certain, and assuredly mortal is her reign
Breaking apart in a hundred sprays of violent agony
After every roaring chequered ascension;
I too mistook pain for her
Pain, her distant shadow
Sorrow, her cousin who triumphs here
Deep in the woods I heard the song of the willow
And thought it was her song
It was the wind playing in the hollow reed
Emptied of all essence in ****** of suffering
Regal moss covers broken walls worn of centuries of abrading life
The deep night deceives of peace only to die in
A thousand pools of blood, every morning
When the harsh light of truth proclaims:
Listen, distances, resound in the hum of blowing winds,
This toll of reality:
Proclaim to the forlorn lover suffering in the thrall of the early night
Proclaim to the hopeful lover labouring in the field of life
Love is not of this world,
Love does not exist in this world
A moments’ exultation follows a lifetime of agony here
The vain, the ******, profferer of gratification
Is the sole winner here:
Go break the crest of the moon on the rising tide
Go break every longing heart!
Go warn the wanderer in the woods
Of the impending doom that looms over his quest

a fine week was had
the day a married
black candle mass
time dawdle
our loved stalked
angel and demon
the devil called
heel warm-
a fly born
and in squash
and in *****
moaning no..
fiery ****** tongue
take the bride upon
the stair
the groom served by
sundry elf
while maiden scent
his self-
spit of toad for
potent
death watch for
content
goblet of newly
born blood
and saw the
dead born
watney´ s pale in
an eight pint
can
red and gold
before the god
the revellers
kowtow
and the girls
vie for a smile
so ennuyer
etched
across his face
evil always
some distraction
a turbid dracula
bored
vice a hold
the betrothed cam
sweet innocent
like starsky
and hutch
naked and bloodied
to the dark one first
rites
right is right..!
crazy horses kicks
off
donny makes a
come back
o scream the tree
crack
through
the clamor
witchs hover
ashine with mire
o higher the crying
the exultation..!
evil the mad one
ah..!
evil made persona
the couple sworn
at each end
scant hors d'oeurvre
to the masters
seed served
cold the
young old
and old..
wine flows
strange going on
in the coat room..
be loved *****
shared..reverence
and shy glance..
our old ice cream
man
strikes up the band..!
thus man and wife  declared
tied and together darkness
with out end..
all cracked raise to health..!
something by sinatra
in the sky yon moon turns
to aversion
the forest weeps
there then the fire
in the eye of
the songbird
there then the
cleansing sweep
of the blackbird
to flight..

Crouched by the lakeside I grasp
a small stone, same as all its neighbours:
no jagged cliff-shorn shard of concussive weather
to be sent pounding across the surface,
but a smooth, round pebble, who traces a single arc
then vanishes from sight –
and the growing ring of ripples
the only testament to its passing.

As I wander on,
the waves of my lone effort are fading.
Yet, as each passing stranger
adds their own voice,
every wave harmonizes,
compounds upon its predecessors,
and once still waters accelerate
towards a resonating crescendo.

And my pebble rests below the surface,
unaware of the exultation above,
until wandering currents sweep it up,
back onto the lakeside once more.

I arise from my idle contemplation,
and pour myself in.

A triumphant voice denotes
A life leaving this room.
We should not be surprised;
It tells us:
          I once was there where many stories
          filled many shelves.
And now, another memory becomes
Another treasure to mine in days of leisure.
          We join in exultation.

There is less serious work about now.
We step in and out of shadows
Cast by the sun filtering through
Her tree and picture window.
The shadows reach many rooms.

She and I were present  
In many of Shakespeare's tombs.
Together we witnessed Royalty paraded:
Elinore, Lear, Macbeth, The Dane.
Her lineage is confirmed.
Our busy stage is less crowded
With the exit of La Grande Dame,
Elizabeth.

She is a tress of hair out of place,
combed in slow sweeps from my forehead.
I thought her an enigma to perchance unravel
by the press of well-paired lips
or by a mind besotted with moon glow
and Grenache wine;
one wicked with wisdom.

Saccharine words stirred into woody coffee,
I, Whitman, imagine her
the chill of Robert Frost
clung like sugar grains to my Leaves of Grass.

Almandine eyes of the nine Mousai
revved up by unbridled inventiveness…
I twinge too much to hold it inside,
she triumphs beyond the rim of her vessel,
so our ache and exultation
steal past the musing sentinel of apprehension;
and leap from once dormant imagination
into spirit shadows and splendid motifs.

She is a stranger to all,
but to those whom she whispers as lover.
We, two strangers of sun and moon,
curl nubile into night
to take our nuptials at dawn.

One hundred million miles and
one earth between us;
now bound as one, we pull the tides
into an unexpected tempest in my heart;
a tender act of indiscretion
undoing a tame, near tepid, bearing.

Thus muse and artist
feast upon the provender of providence
and all delectable in between them.

1642

“Red Sea,” indeed! Talk not to me
Of purple Pharaoh—
I have a Navy in the West
Would pierce his Columns thro’—
Guileless, yet of such Glory fine
That all along the Line
Is it, or is it not, divine—
The Eye inquires with a sigh
That Earth sh’d be so big—
What Exultation in the Woe—
What Wine in the fatigue!

Emergent through emotion
In a sychophantic way,
Thrilling through my system
In recall of teaching’s fray.
Those years of inspiration
As an aspirant of they…
That concrete mass of youthfulness
Wherein I spent my day.

Each hour of nervous questing,
Each confrontation stored,
Each shred of indignation
When the master plan proved flawed.
Through gyroscopic reason,
Through footless halls of pain,
An exultation’s bright explosion
When that child said... “Please explain?’

And the myriad of starburst
When the sky came crashing down
When, as if, by touch of magic….
Realisation there…profound!
From within that mass of granite-ness
Poured enlightenment as gold
And hot jewels of satisfaction
Flowed within this soul… untold.

M.