‘Oinos.’

Pardon, Agathos, the weakness of a spirit new-fledged with
immortality!

‘Agathos.’

You have spoken nothing, my Oinos, for which pardon is to be
demanded. Not even here is knowledge a thing of intuition.
For wisdom, ask of the angels freely, that it may be given!

‘Oinos.’

But in this existence I dreamed that I should be at once
cognizant of all things, and thus at once happy in being
cognizant of all.

‘Agathos.’

Ah, not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of
knowledge! In forever knowing, we are forever blessed; but
to know all, were the curse of a fiend.

‘Oinos.’

But does not The Most High know all?

‘Agathos’.

That (since he is The Most Happy) must be still the
one thing unknown even to HIM.

‘Oinos.’

But, since we grow hourly in knowledge, must not at last
all things be known?

‘Agathos.’

Look down into the abysmal distances!—attempt to force
the gaze down the multitudinous vistas of the stars, as we
sweep slowly through them thus—and thus—and
thus! Even the spiritual vision, is it not at all points
arrested by the continuous golden walls of the
universe?—the walls of the myriads of the shining
bodies that mere number has appeared to blend into unity?

‘Oinos’.

I clearly perceive that the infinity of matter is no dream.

‘Agathos’.

There are no dreams in Aidenn—but it is here whispered
that, of this infinity of matter, the sole purpose is
to afford infinite springs at which the soul may allay the
thirst to know which is forever unquenchable within
it—since to quench it would be to extinguish the
soul’s self. Question me then, my Oinos, freely and without
fear. Come! we will leave to the left the loud harmony of
the Pleiades, and swoop outward from the throne into the
starry meadows beyond Orion, where, for pansies and violets,
and heart’s-ease, are the beds of the triplicate and triple-
tinted suns.

‘Oinos’.

And now, Agathos, as we proceed, instruct me!—speak to
me in the earth’s familiar tones! I understand not what you
hinted to me just now of the modes or of the methods of what
during mortality, we were accustomed to call Creation. Do
you mean to say that the Creator is not God?

‘Agathos’.

I mean to say that the Deity does not create.

‘Oinos’.

Explain!

‘Agathos’.

In the beginning only, he created. The seeming creatures
which are now throughout the universe so perpetually
springing into being can only be considered as the mediate
or indirect, not as the direct or immediate results of the
Divine creative power.

‘Oinos.’

Among men, my Agathos, this idea would be considered
heretical in the extreme.

‘Agathos.’

Among the angels, my Oinos, it is seen to be simply true.

‘Oinos.’

I can comprehend you thus far—that certain operations
of what we term Nature, or the natural laws, will, under
certain conditions, give rise to that which has all the
appearance of creation. Shortly before the final
overthrow of the earth, there were, I well remember, many
very successful experiments in what some philosophers were
weak enough to denominate the creation of animalculae.

‘Agathos.’

The cases of which you speak were, in fact, instances of the
secondary creation, and of the only species of
creation which has ever been since the first word spoke into
existence the first law.

‘Oinos.’

Are not the starry worlds that, from the abyss of nonentity,
burst hourly forth into the heavens—are not these
stars, Agathos, the immediate handiwork of the King?

‘Agathos.’

Let me endeavor, my Oinos, to lead you, step by step, to the
conception I intend. You are well aware that, as no thought
can perish, so no act is without infinite result. We moved
our hands, for example, when we were dwellers on the earth,
and in so doing we gave vibration to the atmosphere which
engirdled it. This vibration was indefinitely extended till
it gave impulse to every particle of the earth’s air, which
thenceforward, and forever, was actuated by the one
movement of the hand. This fact the mathematicians of our
globe well knew. They made the special effects, indeed,
wrought in the fluid by special impulses, the subject of
exact calculation—so that it became easy to determine
in what precise period an impulse of given extent would
engirdle the orb, and impress (forever) every atom of the
atmosphere circumambient. Retrograding, they found no
difficulty; from a given effect, under given conditions, in
determining the value of the original impulse. Now the
mathematicians who saw that the results of any given impulse
were absolutely endless—and who saw that a portion of
these results were accurately traceable through the agency
of algebraic analysis—who saw, too, the facility of
the retrogradation—these men saw, at the same time,
that this species of analysis itself had within itself a
capacity for indefinite progress—that there were no
bounds conceivable to its advancement and applicability,
except within the intellect of him who advanced or applied
it. But at this point our mathematicians paused.

‘Oinos.’

And why, Agathos, should they have proceeded?

‘Agathos.’

Because there were some considerations of deep interest
beyond. It was deducible from what they knew, that to a
being of infinite understanding—one to whom the
perfection of the algebraic analysis lay unfolded—
there could be no difficulty in tracing every impulse given
the air—and the ether through the air—to the
remotest consequences at any even infinitely remote epoch of
time. It is indeed demonstrable that every such impulse
given the air, must in the end impress every
individual thing that exists within the
universe;—and the being of infinite
understanding—the being whom we have imagined—
might trace the remote undulations of the impulse—
trace them upward and onward in their influences upon all
particles of all matter—upward and onward forever in
their modifications of old forms—or, in other words,
in their creation of new—until he found them
reflected—unimpressive at last—back from
the throne of the Godhead. And not only could such a being
do this, but at any epoch, should a given result be afforded
him—should one of these numberless comets, for
example, be presented to his inspection—he could have
no difficulty in determining, by the analytic
retrogradation, to what original impulse it was due. This
power of retrogradation in its absolute fulness and
perfection—this faculty of referring at all
epochs, all effects to all causes—is of
course the prerogative of the Deity alone—but in every
variety of degree, short of the absolute perfection, is the
power itself exercised by the whole host of the Angelic
Intelligences.

‘Oinos’.

But you speak merely of impulses upon the air.

‘Agathos’.

In speaking of the air, I referred only to the earth: but
the general proposition has reference to impulses upon the
ether—which, since it pervades, and alone pervades all
space, is thus the great medium of creation.

‘Oinos’.

Then all motion, of whatever nature, creates?

‘Agathos’.

It must: but a true philosophy has long taught that the
source of all motion is thought—and the source of all
thought is—

‘Oinos’.

God.

‘Agathos’.

I have spoken to you, Oinos, as to a child, of the fair
Earth which lately perished—of impulses upon the
atmosphere of the earth.

‘Oinos’.

You did.

‘Agathos’.

And while I thus spoke, did there not cross your mind some
thought of the physical power of words? Is not every
word an impulse on the air?

‘Oinos’.

But why, Agathos, do you weep—and why, oh, why do your
wings droop as we hover above this fair star—which is
the greenest and yet most terrible of all we have
encountered in our flight? Its brilliant flowers look like a
fairy dream—but its fierce volcanoes like the passions
of a turbulent heart.

‘Agathos’.

They are!—they are!—This wild
star—it is now three centuries since, with clasped
hands, and with streaming eyes, at the feet of my
beloved—I spoke it—with a few passionate
sentences—into birth. Its brilliant flowers are
the dearest of all unfulfilled dreams, and its raging
volcanoes are the passions of the most turbulent and
unhallowed of hearts!

for Jennie in gratitude*

For days afterwards he was preoccupied by what he’d collected into himself from the gallery viewing. He could say it was just painting, but there was a variety of media present in the many surrounding images and artefacts. Certainly there were all kinds of objects: found and gathered, captured and brought into a frame, some filling transparent boxes on a window ledge or simply hung frameless on the wall; sand, fixed foam, paper sea-water stained, a beaten sheet of aluminium; a significant stone standing on a mantelpiece, strange warped pieces of metal with no clue to what they were or had been, a sketchbook with brooding pencilled drawings made fast and thick, filling the page, colour like an echo, and yes, paintings.
 
Three paintings had surprised him; they did not seem to fit until (and this was sometime later) their form and content, their working, had very gradually begun to make a sort of sense.  Possible interpretations – though tenuous – surreptitiously intervened. There were words scrawled across each canvas summoning the viewer into emotional space, a space where suggestions of marks and colour floated on a white surface. These scrawled words were like writing in seaside sand with a finger: the following bird and hiraeth. He couldn’t remember the third exactly. He had a feeling about it – a date or description. But he had forgotten. And this following bird? One of Coleridge’s birds of the Ancient Mariner perhaps? Hiraeth he knew was a difficult Welsh word similar to saudade. It meant variously longing, sometimes passionate (was longing ever not passionate?), a home-sickness, the physical pain of nostalgia. It was said that a well-loved location in conjunction with a point in time could cause such feelings. This small exhibition seemed full of longing, full of something beyond the place and the time and the variousness of colour and texture, of elements captured, collected and represented. And as the distance in time and memory from his experience of the show in a small provincial gallery increased, so did his own thoughts of and about the nature of longing become more acute.
 
He knew he was fortunate to have had the special experience of being alone with ‘the work’ just prior to the gallery opening. His partner was also showing and he had accompanied her as a friendly presence, someone to talk to when the throng of viewers might deplete. But he knew he was surplus to requirements as she’d also brought along a girlfriend making a short film on this emerging, soon to be successful artist. So he’d wandered into the adjoining spaces and without expectation had come upon this very different show: just the title Four Tides to guide him in and around the small white space in which the art work had been distributed. Even the striking miniature catalogue, solely photographs, no text, did little to betray the hand and eye that had brought together what was being shown. Beyond the artist’s name there were only faint traces – a phone number and an email address, no voluminous self-congratulatory CV, no list of previous exhibitions, awards or academic provenance. A light blue bicycle figured in some of her catalogue photographs and on her contact card. One photo in particular had caught the artist very distant, cycling along the curve of a beach. It was this photo that helped him to identify the location – because for twenty years he had passed across this meeting of land and water on a railway journey. This place she had chosen for the coming and going of four tides he had viewed from a train window. The aspect down the estuary guarded by mountains had been a highpoint of a six-hour journey he had once taken several times a year, occasionally and gratefully with his children for whom crossing the long, low wooden bridge across the estuary remained into their teens an adventure, always something telling.
 
He found himself wishing this work into a studio setting, the artist’s studio. It seemed too stark placed on white walls, above the stripped pine floor and the punctuation of reflective glass of two windows facing onto a wet street. Yes, a studio would be good because the pictures, the paintings, the assemblages might relate to what daily surrounded the artist and thus describe her. He had thought at first he was looking at the work of a young woman, perhaps mid-thirties at most. The self-curation was not wholly assured: it held a temporary nature. It was as if she hadn’t finished with the subject and or done with its experience. It was either on-going and promised more, or represented a stage she would put aside (but with love and affection) on her journey as an artist. She wouldn’t milk it for more than it was. And it was full of longing.
 
There was a heaviness, a weight, an inconclusiveness, an echo of reverence about what had been brought together ‘to show’. Had he thought about these aspects more closely, he would not have been so surprised to discovered the artist was closer to his own age, in her fifties. She in turn had been surprised by his attention, by his carefully written comment in her guest book. She seemed pleased to talk intimately and openly, to tell her story of the work. She didn’t need to do this because it was there in the room to be read. It was apparent; it was not oblique or difficult, but caught the viewer in a questioning loop. Was this estuary location somehow at the core of her longing-centred self?  She had admitted that, working in her home or studio, she would find herself facing westward and into the distance both in place and time?
 
On the following day he made time to write, to look through this artist’s window on a creative engagement with a place he was familiar. The experience of viewing her work had affected him. He was not sure yet whether it was the representation of the place or the artist’s engagement with it. In writing about it he might find out. It seemed so deeply personal. It was perhaps better not to know but to imagine. So he imagined her making the journey, possibly by train, finding a place to stay the night – a cheerful B & B - and cycling early in the morning across the long bridge to her previously chosen spot on the estuary: to catch the first of the tides. He already understood from his own experience how an artist can enter trance-like into an environment, absorb its particularness, respond to the uncertainty of its weather, feel surrounded by its elements and textures, and most of all be governed by the continuous and ever-complex play of light.
 
He knew all about longing for a place. For nearly twenty years a similar longing had grown and all but consumed him: his cottage on a mountain overlooking the sea. It had become a place where he had regularly faced up to his created and invented thoughts, his soon-to-be-music and more recently possible poetry and prose. He had done so in silence and solitude.
 
But now he was experiencing a different longing, a longing born from an intensity of love for a young woman, an intensity that circled him about. Her physical self had become a rich landscape to explore and celebrate in gaze, and stroke and caress. It seemed extraordinary that a single person could hold to herself such a habitat of wonder, a rich geography of desire to know and understand. For so many years his longing was bound to the memory of walking cliff paths and empty beaches, the hypnotic viewing of seascaped horizons and the persistent chaos of the sea and wild weather. But gradually this longing for a coming together of land, sea and sky had migrated to settle on a woman who graced his daily, hourly thoughts; who was able to touch and caress him as rain and wind and sun can act upon the body in ever-changing ways. So when he was apart from her it was with such a longing that he found himself weighed down, filled brimfull.
 
In writing, in attempting to consider longing as a something the creative spirit might address, he felt profoundly grateful to the artist on the light blue bicycle whose her observations and invention had kept open a door he felt was closing on him. She had faced her own longing by bringing it into form, and through form into colour and texture, and then into a very particular play: an arrangement of objects and images for the mind to engage with – or not. He dared to feel an affinity with this artist because, like his own work, it did not seem wholly confident. It contained flaws of a most subtle kind, flaws that lent it a conviction and strength that he warmed to. It had not been massaged into correctness. The images and the textures, the directness of it, flowed through him back and forward just like the tides she had come far to observe on just a single day. He remembered then, when looking closely at the unprotected pieces on the walls, how his hand had moved to just touch its surfaces in exactly the way he would bring his fingers close to the body of the woman he loved so much, adored beyond any poetry, and longed for with all his heart and mind.

1970 Odysseus visits cousin Patsy in New York City she introduces him to her best friend Lauren’s older less attractive more reclusive sister Tanya Mulhaney extremely wealthy family father founded corporation manufactures pinball machines which years later develop to video games then casino empire he favors and spoils Tanya but dies suddenly her envious sisters and mother gang up on Tanya is pale skinny flat-chested copious brown bush Odysseus sits in bathtub with Tanya and he probes in a way they hits it off maybe no boy has ever touched her in that way her complexion is so fragile slightest fluster prompts pink blotches on her cheeks neck chest back he admires her book smarts he’s attracted to her refined strangeness he thinks her bush and flat-chest are **** she laughs shyly offers to take him around the world he accepts Odysseus tells his parents Mom goes crazy yells into telephone what are you a ******? you father and i work like fools to send you to the best schools so you can make something of yourself you’re going to throw everything away to be a ***? i tell you we’ll disown you you won’t have a home to come back to do you hear me? we’ll disown you! she sobs how can you just walk out after all we have done for you? you ******* kid! Odysseus takes leave of absence from art school he and Tanya take Iberia jet 12 hour flight with stopover in Iceland to Belgium Tanya sinks into one of her moods swallows several pills to help her rest sitting on other side of Odysseus is curly haired skinny talkative musician claims he has jammed with Miles Davis and other jazz greats Odysseus says yeah right and i’ve shown with Johns and Twombly where exactly are you heading in Europe? musician answers he is a scientologist on his way to visit L. Ron Hubbard in England Odysseus does not know what Dianetics are and wants explanation he asks many questions and musician talks for hours they enjoy each other’s rapport as jet descends in Brussels they exchange home addresses in the States 9 months later when Odysseus returns to America a friend notices scribbled address while skimming through his travel journals Odys! how did you get Chick Corea’s address? do you know him? do you realize how brilliant he is? he’s a keyboard virtuoso! Odysseus questions Chick Corea? who’s Chick Corea? he looks at journal page then says oh that guy i sat next to him on the jet to Europe so he really is a famous musician huh? wow!

in October 1970 Brussels is damp chilly Tanya wears hip-hugger jeans black turtle-neck top North Face shell she huddles her arms around her chest smokes cigarettes looks through hotel room window out into gray overcast sky speaks in defeatist voice i didn’t bring clothes for this weather she picks at her plate in hotel restaurant glumly vacillates later in bed after refusing *** decides they leave tomorrow fly to Canary Islands for several weeks to get tan before traveling through Morocco during winter months Canary Islands are laden with Swedish tourists including bikini clad young girls many not wearing tops Odysseus is thinking about how to swing some of that Swedish free love once Tanya gets drunk succumbs to Odysseus’s ****** overtures it is good  one day while returning to hotel from beach 2 Spanish police stop and question Tanya and Odysseus police order to see their passports then command them into squad car police bark in Spanish rifle through their daypacks point a finger Odysseus can smell alcohol on their breaths Tanya and Odysseus are terrified police drive off main road to remote location abandoned ruins no one is around police order them to step out police drive off laughing Tanya’s complexion is crimson she sobs they could have murdered us no one would know who we are or where to find us we’re lost where are we? Odysseus looks around replies don’t worry we’ll be all right i watched where the driver was going we’ll retrace their trail

they fly to Tangier travel south by train Tanya is irritable insisting Odysseus carry her backpack Casablanca is ***** 3 men peer from sunglasses act suspicious wear tattered trench coats Tanya and Odysseus snack at cafe which provides hookahs for smoking hashish Odysseus scores several grams Tanya laughs suggests they rent car drive south travel to sandy beaches of Diabet for 6 weeks in the morning she paces around French hotel room with cigarette in one hand ashtray in other like she is sultry 1940’s Hollywood actress she stays in room and devours Penguin Classics Tolstoy Stendhal Proust Huysmans Zola turns out Tanya is sexually frigid she buys Odysseus anything he wants but does not put out they take train Marrakech it is sun drenched with blue skies mountains in distance Odysseus wants to go out explore get ***** with the natives he visits Medina daily witnessing many bizarre scenes he does not understand a woman squatting over an egg a man with no legs dragging himself through marketplace holding up cigarette butts in his hand he meets a professor who is out of work because king of Morocco has closed the universities due to teachers’ strike professor explains woman squatting over egg is fortuneteller and man dragging himself has been offered crutches many times yet makes more money playing off pity of tourists cigarette butts are for sale the professor invites Odysseus to visit Berbers in mountains Odysseus persuades Tanya she reluctantly agrees the 3 travel by bus in first-class front row seats vehicle filled with lively families chickens pig bus driver has assistant who lugs people onto bus or shoves them out door at a midpoint bus stops in little town everyone exits bus then men women children urinate in street local venders sell trinkets snacks Odysseus buys nibbles shish-kabob that later professor informs is roasted cat and dog they reenter bus wait suddenly butchered lamb flank is flung onto Odysseus’s lap a man climbs aboard bus stairs then grabs large carcass and heedlessly walks to back seat Odysseus wipes blood and slime off his jeans Tanya demurely giggles bus climbs mountains arrives at small Berber village professor leads them along narrow winding street of shanty huts sheltering merchants open kitchens professor tastes from various steaming iron kettles finally decides on one they are directed to rickety roof where they sit wait a boy comes up with plastic bowl filled with water and small box of Tide following professor they wash their hands then minutes later proprietor brings up simmering *** of couscous serves it with scratched raw plastic bowls no eating utensils they eat with their fingers Tanya seems bothered declines to partake she withdraws into silence after meal she becomes irritable complains of headache says she needs to return to Marrakech she remains standoffish on bus all the way to French hotel

after Marrakech they take boat trip to Italy while onboard Odysseus meets Italian Count who has an eye for him Odysseus wears Jim Morrison beat-up leather jeans Bruce Lee t-shirt scraggly whiskers Count wears thin manicured beard tiny red Speedo swim trunks Tanya grins amused Count offers Odysseus and Tanya to be guests at his villa in Milan city flourishes with stylish clothes loud lively restaurants classical sculptures covered in car pollution following several weeks of aristocratic wining and dining amazing 11 course elegant soiree Odysseus botches compliance with Count’s desires they are asked to leave Tanya laughs hysterically they board train to Germany based on Tanya’s tour book they find historic hotel with wind rattling windows coin operated hot water bath in Munich Tanya stays in room Odysseus goes to dance club meets brown-hared pale skinned German girl neither speak the other’s language he pays for hourly rated room they play German girl in animated gesturing warns him as he is going down on her but he does not understand until several days later scratching beard finds ***** seeks A-200 lice treatment German version leather pants disposed Tanya knows but says nothing she buys Volkswagen they drive through Black Forest Tanya wants to visit King Ludwig’s castles Odysseus does the driving mostly they listen to the Who’s “Who’s Next” and Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” he follows Tanya’s instructions not knowing who King Ludwig was eventually he learns Ludwig was colorful character built extravagant Disney like castles and friends Richard Wagner Bavaria is cold gray brown deep forest green scenic Swiss Alps visible in southern view they drive from Neuschwanstein to Linderhof to Herrenchiemsee then Freiburg lodge in bed and breakfasts Tanya grows restless by all the driving decides to ditch car along road in northern France as Odysseus unscrews car license by road side several cars stop French people concerned they need help Tanya is anxious hoping for clean get away from abandoning vehicle they board train to Paris Tanya speaks a little French in spring of 1971 they are backpacking in search of hotel on Left Bank it rains all morning sky is overcast Tanya reads “Pride and Prejudice” Odysseus draws in sketchbook at sidewalk café sitting next to them are older Parisian couple man detects they are Americans he turns to them expresses in English his contempt why can’t you Americans learn from France’s lessons in Vietnam? Tanya and Odysseus don’t look up they feel like dumb ugly Americans within days they leave Paris

cross English Channel by boat they find temporary apartment in Earl’s Court in London it is overcast almost every day within a month they move to larger place in Chelsea with backyard with run down English garden Odysseus weeds garden plants tomatoes lettuce carrots radishes flowers Tanya stays in her room smokes reads at night they go out to ethnic restaurants one night they visit Indian restaurant a very proper English woman sitting at next table orders exotic fruit for dessert Odysseus asks waiter what kind of fruit waiter answers mango Odysseus has never seen or tasted mango English woman delicately eats the fruit with fork and knife Odysseus orders mango for dessert he attempts to imitate how English lady proceeded fruit slips around on plate finally out of frustration he picks it up in his hands bites into it he is aroused by how luscious mango is sniffing with nose scraping fruit’s skin with front teeth then ******* the seed Tanya makes a face suddenly the seed slides from his grasp shoots across table Tanya’s cheeks neck turn scarlet voice raises stop it Odys! you’re disgusting! are you intentionally trying to embarrass me? why are you doing this? he replies i’m not doing anything to you i’m enjoying the most delicious fruit i’ve ever tasted who cares what it looks like? later she laughs about incident offers to buy more mangos promises to take him shopping at Harrods tomorrow he goes along with their arrangement until it all seems like pretty background scenery to an empty intimacy missing all his friends back at art school he writes about his loneliness he feels trapped in Tanya’s web several times he sneaks English girls into his room when Tanya jealously confronts him he admits he has had enough and wants to go back to Hartford she suggests at the least they fly to Bermuda for several weeks to get tan before returning he declines on June 30 1971 Odysseus returns to Hartford and Tanya moves to San Francisco on July 3 Jim Morrison overdoses in Paris

Come queen of months in company
Wi all thy merry minstrelsy
The restless cuckoo absent long
And twittering swallows chimney song
And hedge row crickets notes that run
From every bank that fronts the sun
And swathy bees about the grass
That stops wi every bloom they pass
And every minute every hour
Keep teazing weeds that wear a flower
And toil and childhoods humming joys
For there is music in the noise
The village childern mad for sport
In school times leisure ever short
That crick and catch the bouncing ball
And run along the church yard wall
Capt wi rude figured slabs whose claims
In times bad memory hath no names
Oft racing round the nookey church
Or calling ecchos in the porch
And jilting oer the weather ****
Viewing wi jealous eyes the clock
Oft leaping grave stones leaning hights
Uncheckt wi mellancholy sights
The green grass swelld in many a heap
Where kin and friends and parents sleep
Unthinking in their jovial cry
That time shall come when they shall lye
As lowly and as still as they
While other boys above them play
Heedless as they do now to know
The unconcious dust that lies below
The shepherd goes wi happy stride
Wi moms long shadow by his side
Down the dryd lanes neath blooming may
That once was over shoes in clay
While martins twitter neath his eves
Which he at early morning leaves
The driving boy beside his team
Will oer the may month beauty dream
And **** his hat and turn his eye
On flower and tree and deepning skye
And oft bursts loud in fits of song
And whistles as he reels along
Cracking his whip in starts of joy
A happy ***** driving boy
The youth who leaves his corner stool
Betimes for neighbouring village school
While as a mark to urge him right
The church spires all the way in sight
Wi cheerings from his parents given
Starts neath the joyous smiles of heaven
And sawns wi many an idle stand
Wi bookbag swinging in his hand
And gazes as he passes bye
On every thing that meets his eye
Young lambs seem tempting him to play
Dancing and bleating in his way
Wi trembling tails and pointed ears
They follow him and loose their fears
He smiles upon their sunny faces
And feign woud join their happy races
The birds that sing on bush and tree
Seem chirping for his company
And all in fancys idle whim
Seem keeping holiday but him
He lolls upon each resting stile
To see the fields so sweetly smile
To see the wheat grow green and long
And list the weeders toiling song
Or short note of the changing thrush
Above him in the white thorn bush
That oer the leaning stile bends low
Loaded wi mockery of snow
Mozzld wi many a lushing thread
Of crab tree blossoms delicate red
He often bends wi many a wish
Oer the brig rail to view the fish
Go sturting by in sunny gleams
And chucks in the eye dazzld streams
Crumbs from his pocket oft to watch
The swarming struttle come to catch
Them where they to the bottom sile
Sighing in fancys joy the while
Hes cautiond not to stand so nigh
By rosey milkmaid tripping bye
Where he admires wi fond delight
And longs to be there mute till night
He often ventures thro the day
At truant now and then to play
Rambling about the field and plain
Seeking larks nests in the grain
And picking flowers and boughs of may
To hurd awhile and throw away
Lurking neath bushes from the sight
Of tell tale eyes till schools noon night
Listing each hour for church clocks hum
To know the hour to wander home
That parents may not think him long
Nor dream of his rude doing wrong
Dreading thro the night wi dreaming pain
To meet his masters wand again
Each hedge is loaded thick wi green
And where the hedger late hath been
Tender shoots begin to grow
From the mossy stumps below
While sheep and cow that teaze the grain
will nip them to the root again
They lay their bill and mittens bye
And on to other labours hie
While wood men still on spring intrudes
And thins the shadow solitudes
Wi sharpend axes felling down
The oak trees budding into brown
Where as they crash upon the ground
A crowd of labourers gather round
And mix among the shadows dark
To rip the crackling staining bark
From off the tree and lay when done
The rolls in lares to meet the sun
Depriving yearly where they come
The green wood pecker of its home
That early in the spring began
Far from the sight of troubling man
And bord their round holes in each tree
In fancys sweet security
Till startld wi the woodmans noise
It wakes from all its dreaming joys
The blue bells too that thickly bloom
Where man was never feared to come
And smell smocks that from view retires
**** rustling leaves and bowing briars
And stooping lilys of the valley
That comes wi shades and dews to dally
White beady drops on slender threads
Wi broad hood leaves above their heads
Like white robd maids in summer hours
Neath umberellas shunning showers
These neath the barkmens crushing treads
Oft perish in their blooming beds
Thus stript of boughs and bark in white
Their trunks shine in the mellow light
Beneath the green surviving trees
That wave above them in the breeze
And waking whispers slowly bends
As if they mournd their fallen friends
Each morning now the weeders meet
To cut the thistle from the wheat
And ruin in the sunny hours
Full many wild weeds of their flowers
Corn poppys that in crimson dwell
Calld ‘head achs’ from their sickly smell
And carlock yellow as the sun
That oer the may fields thickly run
And ‘iron ****’ content to share
The meanest spot that spring can spare
Een roads where danger hourly comes
Is not wi out its purple blooms
And leaves wi points like thistles round
Thickset that have no strength to wound
That shrink to childhoods eager hold
Like hair—and with its eye of gold
And scarlet starry points of flowers
Pimpernel dreading nights and showers
Oft calld ‘the shepherds weather glass’
That sleep till suns have dyd the grass
Then wakes and spreads its creeping bloom
Till clouds or threatning shadows come
Then close it shuts to sleep again
Which weeders see and talk of rain
And boys that mark them shut so soon
will call them ‘John go bed at noon
And fumitory too a name
That superstition holds to fame
Whose red and purple mottled flowers
Are cropt by maids in weeding hours
To boil in water milk and way1
For washes on an holiday
To make their beauty fair and sleak
And scour the tan from summers cheek
And simple small forget me not
Eyd wi a pinshead yellow spot
I’th’ middle of its tender blue
That gains from poets notice due
These flowers the toil by crowds destroys
And robs them of their lowly joys
That met the may wi hopes as sweet
As those her suns in gardens meet
And oft the dame will feel inclind
As childhoods memory comes to mind
To turn her hook away and spare
The blooms it lovd to gather there
My wild field catalogue of flowers
Grows in my ryhmes as thick as showers
Tedious and long as they may be
To some, they never weary me
The wood and mead and field of grain
I coud hunt oer and oer again
And talk to every blossom wild
Fond as a parent to a child
And cull them in my childish joy
By swarms and swarms and never cloy
When their lank shades oer morning pearls
Shrink from their lengths to little girls
And like the clock hand pointing one
Is turnd and tells the morning gone
They leave their toils for dinners hour
Beneath some hedges bramble bower
And season sweet their savory meals
Wi joke and tale and merry peals
Of ancient tunes from happy tongues
While linnets join their fitful songs
Perchd oer their heads in frolic play
Among the tufts of motling may
The young girls whisper things of love
And from the old dames hearing move
Oft making ‘love knotts’ in the shade
Of blue green oat or wheaten blade
And trying simple charms and spells
That rural superstition tells
They pull the little blossom threads
From out the knapweeds button heads
And put the husk wi many a smile
In their white bosoms for awhile
Who if they guess aright the swain
That loves sweet fancys trys to gain
Tis said that ere its lain an hour
Twill blossom wi a second flower
And from her white ******* hankerchief
Bloom as they ne’er had lost a leaf
When signs appear that token wet
As they are neath the bushes met
The girls are glad wi hopes of play
And harping of the holiday
A hugh blue bird will often swim
Along the wheat when skys grow dim
Wi clouds—slow as the gales of spring
In motion wi dark shadowd wing
Beneath the coming storm it sails
And lonly chirps the wheat hid quails
That came to live wi spring again
And start when summer browns the grain
They start the young girls joys afloat
Wi ‘wet my foot’ its yearly note
So fancy doth the sound explain
And proves it oft a sign of rain
About the moor ‘**** sheep and cow
The boy or old man wanders now
Hunting all day wi hopful pace
Each thick sown rushy thistly place
For plover eggs while oer them flye
The fearful birds wi teazing cry
Trying to lead their steps astray
And coying him another way
And be the weather chill or warm
Wi brown hats truckd beneath his arm
Holding each prize their search has won
They plod bare headed to the sun
Now dames oft bustle from their wheels
Wi childern scampering at their heels
To watch the bees that hang and swive
In clumps about each thronging hive
And flit and thicken in the light
While the old dame enjoys the sight
And raps the while their warming pans
A spell that superstition plans
To coax them in the garden bounds
As if they lovd the tinkling sounds
And oft one hears the dinning noise
Which dames believe each swarm decoys
Around each village day by day
Mingling in the warmth of may
Sweet scented herbs her skill contrives
To rub the bramble platted hives
Fennels thread leaves and crimpld balm
To scent the new house of the swarm
The thresher dull as winter days
And lost to all that spring displays
Still mid his barn dust forcd to stand
Swings his frail round wi weary hand
While oer his head shades thickly creep
And hides the blinking owl asleep
And bats in cobweb corners bred
Sharing till night their murky bed
The sunshine trickles on the floor
Thro every crevice of the door
And makes his barn where shadows dwell
As irksome as a prisoners cell
And as he seeks his daily meal
As schoolboys from their tasks will steal
ile often stands in fond delay
To see the daisy in his way
And wild weeds flowering on the wall
That will his childish sports recall
Of all the joys that came wi spring
The twirling top the marble ring
The gingling halfpence hussld up
At pitch and toss the eager stoop
To pick up heads, the smuggeld plays
Neath hovels upon sabbath days
When parson he is safe from view
And clerk sings amen in his pew
The sitting down when school was oer
Upon the threshold by his door
Picking from mallows sport to please
Each crumpld seed he calld a cheese
And hunting from the stackyard sod
The stinking hen banes belted pod
By youths vain fancys sweetly fed
Christning them his loaves of bread
He sees while rocking down the street
Wi weary hands and crimpling feet
Young childern at the self same games
And hears the self same simple names
Still floating on each happy tongue
Touchd wi the simple scene so strong
Tears almost start and many a sigh
Regrets the happiness gone bye
And in sweet natures holiday
His heart is sad while all is gay
How lovly now are lanes and balks
For toils and lovers sunday walks
The daisey and the buttercup
For which the laughing childern stoop
A hundred times throughout the day
In their rude ramping summer play
So thickly now the pasture crowds
In gold and silver sheeted clouds
As if the drops in april showers
Had woo’d the sun and swoond to flowers
The brook resumes its summer dresses
Purling neath grass and water cresses
And mint and flag leaf swording high
Their blooms to the unheeding eye
And taper bowbent hanging rushes
And horse tail childerns bottle brushes
And summer tracks about its brink
Is fresh again where cattle drink
And on its sunny bank the swain
Stretches his idle length again
Soon as the sun forgets the day
The moon looks down on the lovly may
And the little star his friend and guide
Travelling together side by side
And the seven stars and charleses wain
Hangs smiling oer green woods agen
The heaven rekindles all alive
Wi light the may bees round the hive
Swarm not so thick in mornings eye
As stars do in the evening skye
All all are nestling in their joys
The flowers and birds and pasture boys
The firetail, long a stranger, comes
To his last summer haunts and homes
To hollow tree and crevisd wall
And in the grass the rails odd call
That featherd spirit stops the swain
To listen to his note again
And school boy still in vain retraces
The secrets of his hiding places
In the black thorns crowded copse
Thro its varied turns and stops
The nightingale its ditty weaves
Hid in a multitude of leaves
The boy stops short to hear the strain
And ’sweet jug jug’ he mocks again
The yellow hammer builds its nest
By banks where sun beams earliest rest
That drys the dews from off the grass
Shading it from all that pass
Save the rude boy wi ferret gaze
That hunts thro evry secret maze
He finds its pencild eggs agen
All streakd wi lines as if a pen
By natures freakish hand was took
To scrawl them over like a book
And from these many mozzling marks
The school boy names them ‘writing larks’
*** barrels twit on bush and tree
Scarse bigger then a bumble bee
And in a white thorns leafy rest
It builds its curious pudding-nest
Wi hole beside as if a mouse
Had built the little barrel house
Toiling full many a lining feather
And bits of grey tree moss together
Amid the noisey rooky park
Beneath the firdales branches dark
The little golden crested wren
Hangs up his glowing nest agen
And sticks it to the furry leaves
As martins theirs beneath the eaves
The old hens leave the roost betimes
And oer the garden pailing climbs
To scrat the gardens fresh turnd soil
And if unwatchd his crops to spoil
Oft cackling from the prison yard
To peck about the houseclose sward
Catching at butterflys and things
Ere they have time to try their wings
The cattle feels the breath of may
And kick and toss their heads in play
The *** beneath his bags of sand
Oft jerks the string from leaders hand
And on the road will eager stoop
To pick the sprouting thistle up
Oft answering on his weary way
Some distant neighbours sobbing bray
Dining the ears of driving boy
As if he felt a fit of joy
Wi in its pinfold circle left
Of all its company bereft
Starvd stock no longer noising round
Lone in the nooks of foddering ground
Each skeleton of lingering stack
By winters tempests beaten black
Nodds upon props or bolt upright
Stands swarthy in the summer light
And oer the green grass seems to lower
Like stump of old time wasted tower
All that in winter lookd for hay
Spread from their batterd haunts away
To pick the grass or lye at lare
Beneath the mild hedge shadows there
Sweet month that gives a welcome call
To toil and nature and to all
Yet one day mid thy many joys
Is dead to all its sport and noise
Old may day where’s thy glorys gone
All fled and left thee every one
Thou comst to thy old haunts and homes
Unnoticd as a stranger comes
No flowers are pluckt to hail the now
Nor cotter seeks a single bough
The maids no more on thy sweet morn
Awake their thresholds to adorn
Wi dewey flowers—May locks new come
And princifeathers cluttering bloom
And blue bells from the woodland moss
And cowslip cucking ***** to toss
Above the garlands swinging hight
Hang in the soft eves sober light
These maid and child did yearly pull
By many a folded apron full
But all is past the merry song
Of maidens hurrying along
To crown at eve the earliest cow
Is gone and dead and silent now
The laugh raisd at the mocking thorn
Tyd to the cows tail last that morn
The kerchief at arms length displayd
Held up by pairs of swain and maid
While others bolted underneath
Bawling loud wi panting breath
‘Duck under water’ as they ran
Alls ended as they ne’er began
While the new thing that took thy place
Wears faded smiles upon its face
And where enclosure has its birth
It spreads a mildew oer her mirth
The herd no longer one by one
Goes plodding on her morning way
And garlands lost and sports nigh gone
Leaves her like thee a common day
Yet summer smiles upon thee still
Wi natures sweet unalterd will
And at thy births unworshipd hours
Fills her green lap wi swarms of flowers
To crown thee still as thou hast been
Of spring and summer months the queen

Fanfare of northwest wind, a bluejay wind
announces autumn, and the equinox
rolls back blue bays to a far afternoon.
Somewhere beyond the Gorge Li Po is gone,
looking for friendship or an old love's sleeve
or writing letters to his children, lost,
and to his children's children, and to us.
What was his light? of lamp or moon or sun?
Say that it changed, for better or for worse,
sifted by leaves, sifted by snow; on mulberry silk
a slant of witch-light; on the pure text
a slant of genius; emptying mind and heart
for winecups and more winecups and more words.
What was his time? Say that it was a change,
but constant as a changing thing may be,
from chicory's moon-dark blue down the taut scale
to chicory's tenderest pink, in a pink field
such as imagination dreams of thought.
But of the heart beneath the winecup moon
the tears that fell beneath the winecup moon
for children lost, lost lovers, and lost friends,
what can we say but that it never ends?
Even for us it never ends, only begins.
Yet to spell down the poem on her page,
margining her phrases, parsing forth
the sevenfold prism of meaning, up the scale
from chicory pink to blue, is to assume
Li Po himself: as he before assumed
the poets and the sages who were his.
Like him, we too have eaten of the word:
with him are somewhere lost beyond the Gorge:
and write, in rain, a letter to lost children,
a letter long as time and brief as love.

II

And yet not love, not only love. Not caritas
or only that. Nor the pink chicory love,
deep as it may be, even to moon-dark blue,
in which the dragon of his meaning flew
for friends or children lost, or even
for the beloved horse, for Li Po's horse:
not these, in the self's circle so embraced:
too near, too dear, for pure assessment: no,
a letter crammed and creviced, crannied full,
storied and stored as the ripe honeycomb
with other faith than this. As of sole pride
and holy loneliness, the intrinsic face
worn by the always changing shape between
end and beginning, birth and death.
How moves that line of daring on the map?
Where was it yesterday, or where this morning
when thunder struck at seven, and in the bay
the meteor made its dive, and shed its wings,
and with them one more Icarus? Where struck
that lightning-stroke which in your sleep you saw
wrinkling across the eyelid? Somewhere else?
But somewhere else is always here and now.
Each moment crawls that lightning on your eyelid:
each moment you must die. It was a tree
that this time died for you: it was a rock
and with it all its local web of love:
a chimney, spilling down historic bricks:
perhaps a skyful of Ben Franklin's kites.
And with them, us. For we must hear and bear
the news from everywhere: the hourly news,
infinitesimal or vast, from everywhere.

III

Sole pride and loneliness: it is the state
the kingdom rather of all things: we hear
news of the heart in weather of the Bear,
slide down the rungs of Cassiopeia's Chair,
still on the nursery floor, the Milky Way;
and, if we question one, must question all.
What is this 'man'? How far from him is 'me'?
Who, in this conch-shell, locked the sound of sea?
We are the tree, yet sit beneath the tree,
among the leaves we are the hidden bird,
we are the singer and are what is heard.
What is this 'world'? Not Li Po's Gorge alone,
and yet, this too might be. 'The wind was high
north of the White King City, by the fields
of whistling barley under cuckoo sky,'
where, as the silkworm drew her silk, Li Po
spun out his thoughts of us. 'Endless as silk'
(he said) 'these poems for lost loves, and us,'
and, 'for the peachtree, blooming in the ditch.'
Here is the divine loneliness in which
we greet, only to doubt, a voice, a word,
the smoke of a sweetfern after frost, a face
touched, and loved, but still unknown, and then
a body, still mysterious in embrace.
Taste lost as touch is lost, only to leave
dust on the doorsill or an ink-stained sleeve:
and yet, for the inadmissible, to grieve.
Of leaf and love, at last, only to doubt:
from world within or world without, kept out.
  
IV

Caucus of robins on an alien shore
as of the **-** birds at Jewel Gate
southward bound and who knows where and never late
or lost in a roar at sea. Rovers of chaos
each one the 'Rover of Chao,' whose slight bones
shall put to shame the swords. We fly with these,
have always flown, and they
stay with us here, stand still and stay,
while, exiled in the Land of Pa, Li Po
still at the Wine Spring stoops to drink the moon.
And northward now, for fall gives way to spring,
from Sandy Hook and Kitty Hawk they wing,
and he remembers, with the pipes and flutes,
drunk with joy, bewildered by the chance
that brought a friend, and friendship, how, in vain,
he strove to speak, 'and in long sentences,' his pain.
Exiled are we. Were exiles born. The 'far away,'
language of desert, language of ocean, language of sky,
as of the unfathomable worlds that lie
between the apple and the eye,
these are the only words we learn to say.
Each morning we devour the unknown. Each day
we find, and take, and spill, or spend, or lose,
a sunflower splendor of which none knows the source.
This cornucopia of air! This very heaven
of simple day! We do not know, can never know,
the alphabet to find us entrance there.
So, in the street, we stand and stare,
to greet a friend, and shake his hand,
yet know him beyond knowledge, like ourselves;
ocean unknowable by unknowable sand.

V

The locust tree spills sequins of pale gold
in spiral nebulae, borne on the Invisible
earthward and deathward, but in change to find
the cycles to new birth, new life. Li Po
allowed his autumn thoughts like these to flow,
and, from the Gorge, sends word of Chouang's dream.
Did Chouang dream he was a butterfly?
Or did the butterfly dream Chouang? If so,
why then all things can change, and change again,
the sea to brook, the brook to sea, and we
from man to butterfly; and back to man.
This 'I,' this moving 'I,' this focal 'I,'
which changes, when it dreams the butterfly,
into the thing it dreams of; liquid eye
in which the thing takes shape, but from within
as well as from without: this liquid 'I':
how many guises, and disguises, this
nimblest of actors takes, how many names
puts on and off, the costumes worn but once,
the player queen, the lover, or the dunce,
hero or poet, father or friend,
suiting the eloquence to the moment's end;
childlike, or *******; the language of the kiss
sensual or simple; and the gestures, too,
as slight as that with which an empire falls,
or a great love's abjured; these feignings, sleights,
savants, or saints, or fly-by-nights,
the novice in her cell, or wearing tights
on the high wire above a hell of lights:
what's true in these, or false? which is the 'I'
of 'I's'? Is it the master of the cadence, who
transforms all things to a hoop of flame, where through
tigers of meaning leap? And are these true,
the language never old and never new,
such as the world wears on its wedding day,
the something borrowed with something chicory blue?
In every part we play, we play ourselves;
even the secret doubt to which we come
beneath the changing shapes of self and thing,
yes, even this, at last, if we should call
and dare to name it, we would find
the only voice that answers is our own.
We are once more defrauded by the mind.

Defrauded? No. It is the alchemy by which we grow.
It is the self becoming word, the word
becoming world. And with each part we play
we add to cosmic Sum and cosmic sum.
Who knows but one day we shall find,
hidden in the prism at the rainbow's foot,
the square root of the eccentric absolute,
and the concentric absolute to come.

VI

The thousand eyes, the Argus 'I's' of love,
of these it was, in verse, that Li Po wove
the magic cloak for his last going forth,
into the Gorge for his adventure north.
What is not seen or said? The cloak of words
loves all, says all, sends back the word
whether from Green Spring, and the yellow bird
'that sings unceasing on the banks of Kiang,'
or 'from the Green Moss Path, that winds and winds,
nine turns for every hundred steps it winds,
up the Sword Parapet on the road to Shuh.'
'Dead pinetrees hang head-foremost from the cliff.
The cataract roars downward. Boulders fall
Splitting the echoes from the mountain wall.
No voice, save when the nameless birds complain,
in stunted trees, female echoing male;
or, in the moonlight, the lost cuckoo's cry,
piercing the traveller's heart. Wayfarer from afar,
why are you here? what brings you here? why here?'

VII

Why here. Nor can we say why here. The peachtree bough
scrapes on the wall at midnight, the west wind
sculptures the wall of fog that slides
seaward, over the Gulf Stream.
                                                       The rat
comes through the wainscot, brings to his larder
the twinned acorn and chestnut burr. Our sleep
lights for a moment into dream, the eyes
turn under eyelids for a scene, a scene,
o and the music, too, of landscape lost.
And yet, not lost. For here savannahs wave
cressets of pampas, and the kingfisher
binds all that gold with blue.
                                                  Why here? why here?
Why does the dream keep only this, just this C?
Yes, as the poem or the music do?

The timelessness of time takes form in rhyme:
the lotus and the locust tree rehearse
a four-form song, the quatrain of the year:
not in the clock's chime only do we hear
the passing of the Now into the past,
the passing into future of the Now:
hut in the alteration of the bough
time becomes visible, becomes audible,
becomes the poem and the music too:
time becomes still, time becomes time, in rhyme.
Thus, in the Court of Aloes, Lady Yang
called the musicians from the Pear Tree Garden,
called for Li Po, in order that the spring,
tree-peony spring, might so be made immortal.
Li Po, brought drunk to court, took up his brush,
but washed his face among the lilies first,
then wrote the song of Lady Flying Swallow:
which Hsuang Sung, the emperor, forthwith played,
moving quick fingers on a flute of jade.
Who will forget that afternoon? Still, still,
the singer holds his phrase, the rising moon
remains unrisen. Even the fountain's falling blade
hangs in the air unbroken, and says: Wait!

VIII

Text into text, text out of text. Pretext
for scholars or for scholiasts. The living word
springs from the dying, as leaves in spring
spring from dead leaves, our birth from death.
And all is text, is holy text. Sheepfold Hill
becomes its name for us, anti yet is still
unnamed, unnamable, a book of trees
before it was a book for men or sheep,
before it was a book for words. Words, words,
for it is scarlet now, and brown, and red,
and yellow where the birches have not shed,
where, in another week, the rocks will show.
And in this marriage of text and thing how can we know
where most the meaning lies? We climb the hill
through bullbriar thicket and the wild rose, climb
past poverty-grass and the sweet-scented bay
scaring the pheasant from his wall, but can we say
that it is only these, through these, we climb,
or through the words, the cadence, and the rhyme?
Chang Hsu, calligrapher of great renown,
needed to put but his three cupfuls down
to tip his brush with lightning. On the scroll,
wreaths of cloud rolled left and right, the sky
opened upon Forever. Which is which?
The poem? Or the peachtree in the ditch?
Or is all one? Yes, all is text, the immortal text,
Sheepfold Hill the poem, the poem Sheepfold Hill,
and we, Li Po, the man who sings, sings as he climbs,
transposing rhymes to rocks and rocks to rhymes.
The man who sings. What is this man who sings?
And finds this dedicated use for breath
for phrase and periphrase of praise between
the twin indignities of birth and death?
Li Yung, the master of the epitaph,
forgetting about meaning, who himself
had added 'meaning' to the book of >things,'
lies who knows where, himself sans epitaph,
his text, too, lost, forever lost ...
                                                         And yet, no,
text lost and poet lost, these only flow
into that other text that knows no year.
The peachtree in the poem is still here.
The song is in the peachtree and the ear.

IX

The winds of doctrine blow both ways at once.
The wetted finger feels the wind each way,
presaging plums from north, and snow from south.
The dust-wind whistles from the eastern sea
to dry the nectarine and parch the mouth.
The west wind from the desert wreathes the rain
too late to fill our wells, but soon enough,
the four-day rain that bears the leaves away.
Song with the wind will change, but is still song
and pierces to the rightness in the wrong
or makes the wrong a rightness, a delight.
Where are the eager guests that yesterday
thronged at the gate? Like leaves, they could not stay,
the winds of doctrine blew their minds away,
and we shall have no loving-cup tonight.
No loving-cup: for not ourselves are here
to entertain us in that outer year,
where, so they say, we see the Greater Earth.
The winds of doctrine blow our minds away,
and we are absent till another birth.

X

Beyond the Sugar Loaf, in the far wood,
under the four-day rain, gunshot is heard
and with the falling leaf the falling bird
flutters her crimson at the huntsman's foot.
Life looks down at death, death looks up at life,
the eyes exchange the secret under rain,
rain all the way from heaven: and all three
know and are known, share and are shared, a silent
moment of union and communion.
Have we come
this way before, and at some other time?
Is it the Wind Wheel Circle we have come?
We know the eye of death, and in it too
the eye of god, that closes as in sleep,
giving its light, giving its life, away:
clouding itself as consciousness from pain,
clouding itself, and then, the shutter shut.
And will this eye of god awake again?
Or is this what he loses, loses once,
but always loses, and forever lost?
It is the always and unredeemable cost
of his invention, his fatigue. The eye
closes, and no other takes its place.
It is the end of god, each time, each time.

Yet, though the leaves must fall, the galaxies
rattle, detach, and fall, each to his own
perplexed and individual death, Lady Yang
gone with the inkberry's vermilion stalk,
the peony face behind a fan of frost,
the blue-moon eyebrow behind a fan of rain,
beyond recall by any alchemist
or incantation from the Book of Change:
unresumable, as, on Sheepfold Hill,
the fir cone of a thousand years ago:
still, in the loving, and the saying so,
as when we name the hill, and, with the name,
bestow an essence, and a meaning, too:
do we endow them with our lives?
They move
into another orbit: into a time
not theirs: and we become the bell to speak
this time: as we become new eyes
with which they see, the voice
in which they find duration, short or long,
the chthonic and hermetic song.
Beyond Sheepfold Hill,
gunshot again, the bird flies forth to meet
predestined death, to look with conscious sight
into the eye of light
the light unflinching that understands and loves.
And Sheepfold Hill accepts them, and is still.

XI

The landscape and the language are the same.
And we ourselves are language and are land,
together grew with Sheepfold Hill, rock, and hand,
and mind, all taking substance in a thought
wrought out of mystery: birdflight and air
predestined from the first to be a pair:
as, in the atom, the living rhyme
invented her divisions, which in time,
and in the terms of time, would make and break
the text, the texture, and then all remake.
This powerful mind that can by thinking take
the order of the world and all remake,
w

So, this was written to an unnamed ex a while ago. I ran across it the other day, and I might publish it in the collection I'm currently working on. To me, this is more than just a letter, it's a piece of prose. It's a pouring out of the soul in a way that few people take the time to do. Obviously written at a very rocky time in a previous relationship, I enjoy the clarity of thought that's displayed (not as an egotist, but as a stylist), and I enjoy the allusions and illustration. I'm proud of it, if not for the source or the outcome, then for the product of my turmoil. If I were to classify it? I'd label it, now, as a study of the mind. Enjoy it, and, as always, I welcome your comments and criticisms!

-###-

                Before I say anything else, I want you to know that I love you deeply, and truly. I would give anything to make you happy, and I'd do anything you ever asked me to. I don't ever want to hurt you, and I don't ever want you to be unhappy.
                But I am unhappy. I sleep next to a woman I can't touch until she won't notice, who won't - or can't, I still can't figure out which - show me the affection I crave; and when I try to explain to her the physical and mental stress this puts me through, she doesn't understand or doesn't care (still can't pin that one, either).
                I once took a "Psychology of Affection" class. Evidently, the emotion we call "love" is a conglomeration of a number of different, smaller emotions. Chiefly among them are attention and affection. Attention was always defined by my professor as "the willingness of one to give their focus in degrees, and the blatantness with which they are willing to display that focus." He went on to explain that when one is willing to give their focus but not to display it, or willing to make a display but not to give it, then an imbalance is affected, and either one or both members of a relationship become unhappy. And degrees of happiness become apparent when degrees of willingness are shown.
                In our case, I think, I am both willing to give you my attention, and unafraid to do it regardless of place or time; therefore, I think I give you a very high degree of attention. How do you think you score? How do you think I'd score you?
                Affection works on the same principle: willingness to give, and the ability to do so in a way that is apparent to the other party. Along with these two, though, Affection has a third variable: frequency. The combination of these three and the balance that must be kept determines the amount of affection given, and received at an intellectual level.
                I am entirely certain that I have been willing to show you ample affection in any venue, I am quite capable of showing you my affection in a plethora of ways, and I have done so (in innumerable combinations) with staggering frequency, despite the lack of reciprocation that should have left me hopeless.
                Well, right about now, I'm starting to feel hopeless. Any relationship requires two very basic things, hon: cerebral and physical interaction. An intimate relationship, therefore, requires an amount of intimacy in both cerebral and physical interactions. In addition, any relationship, intimate or otherwise, requires equal participation in all areas to continue over any extended period of time.
                I have been trying for God knows how long, to make this explicitly clear to you: I do not receive enough affection or attention from you for me to stay happy.
                I've laid a foundation in a universal truth for you; you have the science of our interaction at your fingertips, now. You understand what I understand, so I'm going to be as forward as I can in addressing this situation.
                In order for me to stay satisfied with our relationship, the amount of affection and attention I get HAS to change. I am, currently, both mentally and physically distressed, and I am at a breaking point. I have tried multiple times to get you to change: I've tried being subtle and hinting at things I like you to do - things I'd like to see more frequently from you; I've tried being abrasive, being a **** - telling you what I don't like, and why; I've tried being manipulative - guilt-tripping you into thinking or acting differently; I've tried (God, have I tried!) to be truthful and sweet and kind - to tell you, up front, what pleases me and what doesn't in the un-charged air of plain discussion. Any, and all (!), of these methods have been met with selfish stubbornness. I have tried, very hard, to convince myself that it's just been me. That it's something I have, or haven't, been doing. That me flipping out so often is just me freaking out. That none of my state of mind has anything to do with you. I dread putting any of the blame on you because...I worship you, I don't want your flawless image tainted by these things! But, at this point, I've done so much, and tried so hard to get you to change, to open up to me, to act (just act!) like you want me in your head and heart and *****. But you've been stubborn and you refuse to change...and it is driving me away.
                I don't want you to drive me away. I know you love me; I'm convinced you think I improve your life. And I'm convinced you improve mine in so many ways. But there is an imbalance.... I've done as much as any man can be asked: I have been kind, gentle, sweet, gracious, caring, selfless, and loving; but I cannot be these things when you will neither receive them nor give them back. My emotion, my spirit, and my love are being swallowed up in a void, and I can feel the light in this relationship fading. I can't stay in this if I'm the only one showing how I feel. If you don't love me, anymore, tell me. But I can't stay here and not know. I can't give you so much of my heart, and not get anything in return. It's my turn to be selfish.
                I am banking on the hope that you want this to work, honey. I am praying to God, Almighty that you would rather change how you act than give me up.
                I have never given anyone I've been in a relationship with an ultimatum before. Maybe that's why I've been hurt so badly before. But I'm not going to sink this ship myself. I'm giving you an honest chance. I want this, more than anything. I want you more than anything! I don't care that we don't earn enough for food, yet. I don't care that you spend oodles of time with your friends; I don't care about anything you do with your life except this. This one thing will solve so many of our problems, you don't even realize!
                My peace...my serenity with our relationship and with you as my partner in life, depends, solely, on how you behave towards me. There aren't enough Josephine Collective concerts or pills, or parties in all the world that will make me feel like you love me more than you showing me your **** self. I NEED this. It is essential to my functioning as your lover and your friend; I can't love a stone. And I can guarantee you, right now, that if you can put aside your insecurities, put aside your "awkwardness" argument, put aside your doubt that I would ever, EVER, turn you away or leave you alone, and just show me every minute of every day that you love me, I would never worry again. Reassure me with a kiss. Say "hello" with a kiss. Warm up by scooting closer. Cool down by throwing off a blanket - not pushing me away. Act like you can't keep your hands off me. There will be no nights where I ask you distressing questions; there won't be times when I'm offended by your going somewhere without me; I will not get upset when plans get upset. If I knew in my heart of hearts that you loved me and you'd make sure I knew it when you saw me, then there wouldn't be room for doubt.
                But right now...I don't know whether you love me or whether you're just going through the motions. My thinking is "if she loved me, she'd show me." But you don't show me. You know this as well as I do! One passionate kiss every couple of weeks is not showing me. A wag of the hips a couple times a month doesn't show me. Part of the psychological validation for committing to a relationship is the fact that your partner's body is yours to use. And it should be a willing use! I am a male. Three-fourths of my interaction with society is conducted physically, or visually. I need to see and feel that you love me. And that's not very much to ask from you, is it? And it's not awkwardness. You've shown me plenty of times that you're not abnormally awkward. And it's not shyness; you've been perfectly happy to make a scene in front of others before. It's not ***, either. *** isn't what trips me up. I'm fine without *** as long as I know you'd give it if you could. If I was confident that you'd jump my bones before I ever suggested it, then it wouldn't be an issue. But I'm not confident. Hell, I could go another three months if I got a BJ now and then.... I'm tempted to say it's pure selfish stubbornness, but I know that's not true. I think you're afraid of something. Maybe of opening up - spilling your guts - for me. Maybe you've been hurt a lot worse than I realize? There are so many possibilities. But you're the only one that can let me in, baby.
                I know it's not your way. That's evident enough from all my failures. But this is beyond "my way versus your way," now. This is essential to our being together. I love you, selflessly and shamelessly; but if I am going to be happy with you, I need to know you love me back. This isn't an option, anymore, dearest. You have to change. I need to know on a daily, hourly, moment-to-moment basis that you prefer me over anything else...period. My heart is breaking because I can't tell if you love me back. So, I'm going to make this easy on you. I've brought this up to you before - multiple times, actually. Each one just as memorable as the next. Each one serious enough to tell you that something has to change. But you don't seem to get it. You don't understand that this is paramount to my happiness...essential to my functioning; and you don't get that yet. You've asked me to do multiple things differently; I have changed how I act - who I am - to cater to your peace and happiness, and I am happy to do so. I have asked this one thing of you and you won't do it? I have asked this one thing because it is the one thing that I need to change. I've told you that. But the day after, and the week after, and the month after I bring this up, nothing changes. I can't handle that. I can't handle that I can be so willing to make you happy...to change my thoughts and actions through my own will to make your life simpler, less worrisome, happier and easier; yet you are so unwilling to grab your own mind and make it behave as you choose to ease my mind and my heart and give me that little validation I need from you so I can tell myself that I am your whole world the way you're mine!
                I will always love you. Always.
                But I can't be with someone who can't show me they love me.
                This is your ultimatum: Change. Put me in your mind. Think about the things you do that make me happy, and do them. Physically connect with me. Touch me on a regular basis. Visually connect with me. Get my attention, and hold it every day. Act like you are my woman the way I try to be your man. And do it now. You do not get a week or a month or a year. I am out of time. I can't wait on this any longer. If you want me here, hold me here with your own two arms.
                If you can't hold me, then I won't stay.

-###-

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As a uniform, he always wore
the grey ironmonger's coat
immaculately pressed and bore
clipped hair neat as well as a
close shave.

Mr. Cornthwaite (all of us
minions called him only Mr.)
was no "Do It 'Cos I Say So" boss
but with patience would teach
and preach retail folklore:

Cooks' staples stored well inside
our mini-market shop advanced
for its 50s' existence; shelf-stacking
to re-arrange for early use-by at the
front; fast-moving lines checked
hourly if not sooner; trusted staff
becoming the Tasting Squad for
new fresh produce being considered
for supply - The Cornflake (never
uttered in his hearing) circulating
to ensure not only that his ever-clear
commands were reflected in full shelves
but also that staff were coping not
rushed or overwhelmed.

The best Warrant Officer cares
just as much commands as
my de-mobbed Warrant Officer
father used to tell me when I asked.

(c) C J Heyworth

Your secrets were always safe with me//Wasn't my fault people were smarter than you stupidly thought they'd be//Would it have been better, more clever, if they believed you were a werewolf?//However, you did have the claws that shot out and grabbed me//I'd never lay a hand on you how you would land on me//I could see it when you wore your fangs and raised your fist up to harm me//Werewolf//Instead you got in my face and twist my wrists//So close we could of kissed should of kissed but you were ****** that I wanted to coexist..
Your growling was a turn on but you were ******* me while scowling//Because how dare I please tease and ******* hourly then beg you for one pounding//Yeah, ******* is the best and you were ******* with the best but your kind of ******* was so ******* messed//And you made me feel like a used **** test.//Red wild eyes going to sleep and waking up//Had to have the green since you were just a little wolf pup//They ask you if you want another bowl-full you turn and bark YupYup.
And just so we can recap//You weren't always a monster//You were a gentleman when I first met you//For two months then I saw the real monster in you//You had me in your trap and then I saw that you were turning//You began to snap and then you were cracking and squirming//I found it disturbing//But I held on for months hoping that around you'd be turning.
But you only came back around when you were howling homeless like a stray//You cheated on me with her//Tried to kick me out to keep her//They ALL said that you'd been with HER//But your hustle couldn't make a ***** stay//She learned you always blew your pay//On the drugs and on the Obey//Discovered your secret then didn't give you the time of day//So she scampered off back to her ex//Lone wolf//But I took you back in//You saw I was less than thin//Like Hell you cared, you were wearing monster skin//You're a cold-hearted werewolf//With a sharp ****** grin.
I can name the one time when you came to my rescue//You were ******* with them other sheep and I was under their fescue//I don't know why you bothered to yank me up from the muck when at the end you took my head and smacked it down til it stuck//Got back up and had those sheep cooked for supper//Now they're on my side, in my insides//Now they're gone, I'm gone, and no one's left to hear you mutter//Your secrets were always safe with me//But now you are just a lone wolf.

RKT

AN UNPUBLISHED DRAMA.

I.

ROME.—A Hall in a Palace. ALESSANDRA and CASTIGLIONE

Alessandra.     Thou art sad, Castiglione.

Castiglione.    Sad!—not I.
                Oh, I’m the happiest, happiest man in Rome!
                A few days more, thou knowest, my Alessandra,
                Will make thee mine. Oh, I am very happy!

Aless.          Methinks thou hast a singular way of showing
                Thy happiness—what ails thee, cousin of mine?
                Why didst thou sigh so deeply?

Cas.            Did I sigh?
                I was not conscious of it. It is a fashion,
                A silly—a most silly fashion I have
                When I am very happy. Did I sigh? (sighing.)

Aless.          Thou didst. Thou art not well. Thou hast indulged
                Too much of late, and I am vexed to see it.
                Late hours and wine, Castiglione,—these
                Will ruin thee! thou art already altered—
                Thy looks are haggard—nothing so wears away
                The constitution as late hours and wine.

Cas. (musing ). Nothing, fair cousin, nothing—
                Not even deep sorrow—
                Wears it away like evil hours and wine.
                I will amend.

Aless.          Do it! I would have thee drop
                Thy riotous company, too—fellows low born
                Ill suit the like of old Di Broglio’s heir
                And Alessandra’s husband.

Cas.            I will drop them.

Aless.          Thou wilt—thou must. Attend thou also more
                To thy dress and equipage—they are over plain
                For thy lofty rank and fashion—much depends
                Upon appearances.

Cas.            I’ll see to it.

Aless.          Then see to it!—pay more attention, sir,
                To a becoming carriage—much thou wantest
                In dignity.

Cas.            Much, much, oh, much I want
                In proper dignity.

Aless.
(haughtily).     Thou mockest me, sir!

Cos.
(abstractedly).  Sweet, gentle Lalage!

Aless.          Heard I aright?
                I speak to him—he speaks of Lalage?
                Sir Count!
       (places her hand on his shoulder)
                           what art thou dreaming?
                He’s not well!
                What ails thee, sir?

Cas.(starting). Cousin! fair cousin!—madam!
                I crave thy pardon—indeed I am not well—
                Your hand from off my shoulder, if you please.
                This air is most oppressive!—Madam—the Duke!

Enter Di Broglio.

Di Broglio.     My son, I’ve news for thee!—hey!
              —what’s the matter?
        (observing Alessandra).
                I’ the pouts? Kiss her, Castiglione! kiss her,
                You dog! and make it up, I say, this minute!
                I’ve news for you both. Politian is expected
                Hourly in Rome—Politian, Earl of Leicester!
                We’ll have him at the wedding. ’Tis his first visit
                To the imperial city.

Aless.          What! Politian
                Of Britain, Earl of Leicester?

Di Brog.        The same, my love.
                We’ll have him at the wedding. A man quite young
                In years, but gray in fame. I have not seen him,
                But Rumor speaks of him as of a prodigy
                Pre-eminent in arts, and arms, and wealth,
                And high descent. We’ll have him at the wedding.

Aless.          I have heard much of this Politian.
                Gay, volatile and giddy—is he not,
                And little given to thinking?

Di Brog.        Far from it, love.
                No branch, they say, of all philosophy
                So deep abstruse he has not mastered it.
                Learned as few are learned.

Aless.          ’Tis very strange!
                I have known men have seen Politian
                And sought his company. They speak of him
                As of one who entered madly into life,
                Drinking the cup of pleasure to the dregs.

Cas.            Ridiculous! Now I have seen Politian
                And know him well—nor learned nor mirthful he.
                He is a dreamer, and shut out
                From common passions.

Di Brog.        Children, we disagree.
                Let us go forth and taste the fragrant air
                Of the garden. Did I dream, or did I hear
                Politian was a melancholy man?

                (Exeunt.)




II.

ROME.—A Lady’s Apartment, with a window open and looking into a garden.
LALAGE, in deep mourning, reading at a table on which lie some books and
a hand-mirror. In the background JACINTA (a servant maid) leans
carelessly upon a chair.


Lalage.         Jacinta! is it thou?

Jacinta
(pertly).        Yes, ma’am, I’m here.

Lal.            I did not know, Jacinta, you were in waiting.
                Sit down!—let not my presence trouble you—
                Sit down!—for I am humble, most humble.

Jac. (aside).   ’Tis time.

(Jacinta seats herself in a side-long manner upon the chair, resting
her elbows upon the back, and regarding her mistress with a contemptuous
look. Lalage continues to read.)

Lal.            “It in another climate, so he said,
                Bore a bright golden flower, but not i’ this soil!”

         (pauses—turns over some leaves and resumes.)

                “No lingering winters there, nor snow, nor shower—
                But Ocean ever to refresh mankind
                Breathes the shrill spirit of the western wind”
                Oh, beautiful!—most beautiful!—how like
                To what my fevered soul doth dream of Heaven!
                O happy land! (pauses) She died!—the maiden died!
                O still more happy maiden who couldst die!
                Jacinta!

        (Jacinta returns no answer, and Lalage presently resumes.)

                Again!—a similar tale
                Told of a beauteous dame beyond the sea!
                Thus speaketh one Ferdinand in the words of the play—
                “She died full young”—one Bossola answers him—
                “I think not so—her infelicity
                Seemed to have years too many”—Ah, luckless lady!
                Jacinta! (still no answer.)
                Here’s a far sterner story—
                But like—oh, very like in its despair—
                Of that Egyptian queen, winning so easily
                A thousand hearts—losing at length her own.
                She died. Thus endeth the history—and her maids
                Lean over her and keep—two gentle maids
                With gentle names—Eiros and Charmion!
                Rainbow and Dove!—Jacinta!

Jac.
(pettishly).    Madam, what is it?

Lal.            Wilt thou, my good Jacinta, be so kind
                As go down in the library and bring me
                The Holy Evangelists?

Jac.            Pshaw!

                (Exit)

Lal.            If there be balm
                For the wounded spirit in Gilead, it is there!
                Dew in the night time of my bitter trouble
                Will there be found—”dew sweeter far than that
                Which hangs like chains of pearl on Hermo

When all of worldly beauty's lost
When form and face have borne the cost
Of life's sojourn upon this earth
A greater glory then springs forth

When vanity is cast aside
With long-dashed dreams and fallen pride
At last a better hope I see
One anchored in eternity

When no one gives a second glance
Or offers promise of romance
I know the One whose love is true
Who looks beyond what most men do

When wit and charm have fled from thought
And company's no longer sought
There's still One friend who longs to hear
My every word, desire and fear

When awkwardness is more the rule
Than competence and being cool
His words I hear so gently spoken,
"Come, poor in spirit and all who are broken."

When those around me criticize
With disapproval in their eyes
He spreads His arms with full embrace
And wears acceptance on His face

When kindred spirit can't be found
And understanding's wayward bound
The One who knows me best will be
Thinking precious thoughts toward me

When foot is slipping, mind astray
From trying to fix things my own way
He rescues me with hourly grace
And sets me in a spacious place

When all my naught attempts at fame
Lie crushed beneath a weight of shame
I seek the fame of Him instead
Who calls my name and lifts my head

When youth and vigor fade away
And triumph seems an ancient day
My strength can rest in One who brings
Fresh power to soar on eagle's wings

When my last breath some day I take
Death's shadowed crossing, hence, to make
Upon Christ's nail-scarred feet I'll fall
To kiss that One who is my ALL

Late, my grandson! half the morning have I paced these sandy tracts,
Watch'd again the hollow ridges roaring into cataracts,

Wander'd back to living boyhood while I heard the curlews call,
I myself so close on death, and death itself in Locksley Hall.

So--your happy suit was blasted--she the faultless, the divine;
And you liken--boyish babble--this boy-love of yours with mine.

I myself have often babbled doubtless of a foolish past;
Babble, babble; our old England may go down in babble at last.

'Curse him!' curse your fellow-victim? call him dotard in your rage?
Eyes that lured a doting boyhood well might fool a dotard's age.

Jilted for a wealthier! wealthier? yet perhaps she was not wise;
I remember how you kiss'd the miniature with those sweet eyes.

In the hall there hangs a painting--Amy's arms about my neck--
Happy children in a sunbeam sitting on the ribs of wreck.

In my life there was a picture, she that clasp'd my neck had flown;
I was left within the shadow sitting on the wreck alone.

Yours has been a slighter ailment, will you sicken for her sake?
You, not you! your modern amourist is of easier, earthlier make.

Amy loved me, Amy fail'd me, Amy was a timid child;
But your Judith--but your worldling--she had never driven me wild.

She that holds the diamond necklace dearer than the golden ring,
She that finds a winter sunset fairer than a morn of Spring.

She that in her heart is brooding on his briefer lease of life,
While she vows 'till death shall part us,' she the would-be-widow wife.

She the worldling born of worldlings--father, mother--be content,
Ev'n the homely farm can teach us there is something in descent.

Yonder in that chapel, slowly sinking now into the ground,
Lies the warrior, my forefather, with his feet upon the hound.

Cross'd! for once he sail'd the sea to crush the Moslem in his pride;
Dead the warrior, dead his glory, dead the cause in which he died.

Yet how often I and Amy in the mouldering aisle have stood,
Gazing for one pensive moment on that founder of our blood.

There again I stood to-day, and where of old we knelt in prayer,
Close beneath the casement crimson with the shield of Locksley--there,

All in white Italian marble, looking still as if she smiled,
Lies my Amy dead in child-birth, dead the mother, dead the child.

Dead--and sixty years ago, and dead her aged husband now--
I this old white-headed dreamer stoopt and kiss'd her marble brow.

Gone the fires of youth, the follies, furies, curses, passionate tears,
Gone like fires and floods and earthquakes of the planet's dawning years.

Fires that shook me once, but now to silent ashes fall'n away.
Cold upon the dead volcano sleeps the gleam of dying day.

Gone the tyrant of my youth, and mute below the chancel stones,
All his virtues--I forgive them--black in white above his bones.

Gone the comrades of my bivouac, some in fight against the foe,
Some thro' age and slow diseases, gone as all on earth will go.

Gone with whom for forty years my life in golden sequence ran,
She with all the charm of woman, she with all the breadth of man,

Strong in will and rich in wisdom, Edith, yet so lowly-sweet,
Woman to her inmost heart, and woman to her tender feet,

Very woman of very woman, nurse of ailing body and mind,
She that link'd again the broken chain that bound me to my kind.

Here to-day was Amy with me, while I wander'd down the coast,
Near us Edith's holy shadow, smiling at the slighter ghost.

Gone our sailor son thy father, Leonard early lost at sea;
Thou alone, my boy, of Amy's kin and mine art left to me.

Gone thy tender-natured mother, wearying to be left alone,
Pining for the stronger heart that once had beat beside her own.

Truth, for Truth is Truth, he worshipt, being true as he was brave;
Good, for Good is Good, he follow'd, yet he look'd beyond the grave,

Wiser there than you, that crowning barren Death as lord of all,
Deem this over-tragic drama's closing curtain is the pall!

Beautiful was death in him, who saw the death, but kept the deck,
Saving women and their babes, and sinking with the sinking wreck,

Gone for ever! Ever? no--for since our dying race began,
Ever, ever, and for ever was the leading light of man.

Those that in barbarian burials ****'d the slave, and slew the wife,
Felt within themselves the sacred passion of the second life.

Indian warriors dream of ampler hunting grounds beyond the night;
Ev'n the black Australian dying hopes he shall return, a white.

Truth for truth, and good for good! The Good, the True, the Pure, the Just--
Take the charm 'For ever' from them, and they crumble into dust.

Gone the cry of 'Forward, Forward,' lost within a growing gloom;
Lost, or only heard in silence from the silence of a tomb.

Half the marvels of my morning, triumphs over time and space,
Staled by frequence, shrunk by usage into commonest commonplace!

'Forward' rang the voices then, and of the many mine was one.
Let us hush this cry of 'Forward' till ten thousand years have gone.

Far among the vanish'd races, old Assyrian kings would flay
Captives whom they caught in battle--iron-hearted victors they.

Ages after, while in Asia, he that led the wild Moguls,
Timur built his ghastly tower of eighty thousand human skulls,

Then, and here in Edward's time, an age of noblest English names,
Christian conquerors took and flung the conquer'd Christian into flames.

Love your enemy, bless your haters, said the Greatest of the great;
Christian love among the Churches look'd the twin of heathen hate.

From the golden alms of Blessing man had coin'd himself a curse:
Rome of Caesar, Rome of Peter, which was crueller? which was worse?

France had shown a light to all men, preach'd a Gospel, all men's good;
Celtic Demos rose a Demon, shriek'd and slaked the light with blood.

Hope was ever on her mountain, watching till the day begun--
Crown'd with sunlight--over darkness--from the still unrisen sun.

Have we grown at last beyond the passions of the primal clan?
'**** your enemy, for you hate him,' still, 'your enemy' was a man.

Have we sunk below them? peasants maim the helpless horse, and drive
Innocent cattle under thatch, and burn the kindlier brutes alive.

Brutes, the brutes are not your wrongers--burnt at midnight, found at morn,
Twisted hard in mortal agony with their offspring, born-unborn,

Clinging to the silent mother! Are we devils? are we men?
Sweet St. Francis of Assisi, would that he were here again,

He that in his Catholic wholeness used to call the very flowers
Sisters, brothers--and the beasts--whose pains are hardly less than ours!

Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! who can tell how all will end?
Read the wide world's annals, you, and take their wisdom for your friend.

Hope the best, but hold the Present fatal daughter of the Past,
Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hour will last.

Ay, if dynamite and revolver leave you courage to be wise:
When was age so cramm'd with menace? madness? written, spoken lies?

Envy wears the mask of Love, and, laughing sober fact to scorn,
Cries to Weakest as to Strongest, 'Ye are equals, equal-born.'

Equal-born? O yes, if yonder hill be level with the flat.
Charm us, Orator, till the Lion look no larger than the Cat,

Till the Cat thro' that mirage of overheated language loom
Larger than the Lion,--Demos end in working its own doom.

Russia bursts our Indian barrier, shall we fight her? shall we yield?
Pause! before you sound the trumpet, hear the voices from the field.

Those three hundred millions under one Imperial sceptre now,
Shall we hold them? shall we loose them? take the suffrage of the plow.

Nay, but these would feel and follow Truth if only you and you,
Rivals of realm-ruining party, when you speak were wholly true.

Plowmen, Shepherds, have I found, and more than once, and still could find,
Sons of God, and kings of men in utter nobleness of mind,

Truthful, trustful, looking upward to the practised hustings-liar;
So the Higher wields the Lower, while the Lower is the Higher.

Here and there a cotter's babe is royal-born by right divine;
Here and there my lord is lower than his oxen or his swine.

Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! once again the sickening game;
Freedom, free to slay herself, and dying while they shout her name.

Step by step we gain'd a freedom known to Europe, known to all;
Step by step we rose to greatness,--thro' the tonguesters we may fall.

You that woo the Voices--tell them 'old experience is a fool,'
Teach your flatter'd kings that only those who cannot read can rule.

Pluck the mighty from their seat, but set no meek ones in their place;
Pillory Wisdom in your markets, pelt your offal at her face.

Tumble Nature heel o'er head, and, yelling with the yelling street,
Set the feet above the brain and swear the brain is in the feet.

Bring the old dark ages back without the faith, without the hope,
Break the State, the Church, the Throne, and roll their ruins down the *****.

Authors--essayist, atheist, novelist, realist, rhymester, play your part,
Paint the mortal shame of nature with the living hues of Art.

Rip your brothers' vices open, strip your own foul passions bare;
Down with Reticence, down with Reverence--forward--naked--let them stare.

Feed the budding rose of boyhood with the drainage of your sewer;
Send the drain into the fountain, lest the stream should issue pure.

Set the maiden fancies wallowing in the troughs of Zolaism,--
Forward, forward, ay and backward, downward too into the abysm.

Do your best to charm the worst, to lower the rising race of men;
Have we risen from out the beast, then back into the beast again?

Only 'dust to dust' for me that sicken at your lawless din,
Dust in wholesome old-world dust before the newer world begin.

Heated am I? you--you wonder--well, it scarce becomes mine age--
Patience! let the dying actor mouth his last upon the stage.

Cries of unprogressive dotage ere the dotard fall asleep?
Noises of a current narrowing, not the music of a deep?

Ay, for doubtless I am old, and think gray thoughts, for I am gray:
After all the stormy changes shall we find a changeless May?

After madness, after massacre, Jacobinism and Jacquerie,
Some diviner force to guide us thro' the days I shall not see?

When the schemes and all the systems, Kingdoms and Republics fall,
Something kindlier, higher, holier--all for each and each for all?

All the full-brain, half-brain races, led by Justice, Love, and Truth;
All the millions one at length with all the visions of my youth?

All diseases quench'd by Science, no man halt, or deaf or blind;
Stronger ever born of weaker, lustier body, larger mind?

Earth at last a warless world, a single race, a single tongue--
I have seen her far away--for is not Earth as yet so young?--

Every tiger madness muzzled, every serpent passion ****'d,
Every grim ravine a garden, every blazing desert till'd,

Robed in universal harvest up to either pole she smiles,
Universal ocean softly washing all her warless Isles.

Warless? when her tens are thousands, and her thousands millions, then--
All her harvest all too narrow--who can fancy warless men?

Warless? war will die out late then. Will it ever? late or soon?
Can it, till this outworn earth be dead as yon dead world the moon?

Dead the new astronomy calls her. . . . On this day and at this hour,
In this gap between the sandhills, whence you see the Locksley tower,

Here we met, our latest meeting--Amy--sixty years ago--
She and I--the moon was falling greenish thro' a rosy glow,

Just above the gateway tower, and even where you see her now--
Here we stood and claspt each other, swore the seeming-deathless vow. . . .

Dead, but how her living glory lights the hall, the dune, the grass!
Yet the moonlight is the sunlight, and the sun himself will pass.

Venus near her! smiling downward at this earthlier earth of ours,
Closer on the Sun, perhaps a world of never fading flowers.

Hesper, whom the poet call'd the Bringer home of all good things.
All good things may move in Hesper, perfect peoples, perfect kings.

Hesper--Venus--were we native to that splendour or in Mars,
We should see the Globe we groan in, fairest of their evening stars.

Could we dream of wars and carnage, craft and madness, lust and spite,
Roaring London, raving Paris, in that point of peaceful light?

Might we not in glancing heavenward on a star so silver-fair,
Yearn, and clasp the hands and murmur, 'Would to God that we were there'?

Forward, backward, backward, forward, in the immeasurable sea,
Sway'd by vaster ebbs and flows than can be known to you or me.

All the suns--are these but symbols of innumerable man,
Man or Mind that sees a shadow of the planner or the plan?

Is there evil but on earth? or pain in every peopled sphere?
Well be grateful for the sounding watchword, 'Evolution' here,

Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good,
And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud.

What are men that He should heed us? cried the king of sacred song;
Insects of an hour, that hourly work their brother insect wrong,

While the silent Heavens roll, and Suns along their fiery way,
All their planets whirling round them, flash a million miles a day.

Many an aeon moulded earth before her highest, man, was born,
Many an aeon too may pass when earth is manless and forlorn,

Earth so huge, and yet so bounded--pools of salt, and plots of land--
Shallow skin of green and azure--chains of mountain, grains of sand!

Only That which made us, meant us to be mightier by and by,
Set the sphere of all the boundless Heavens within the human eye,

Sent the shadow of Himself, the boundless, thro' the human soul;
Boundless inward, in the atom, boundless outward, in the Whole.

                                                *

Here is Locksley Hall, my grandson, here the lion-guarded gate.
Not to-night in Locksley Hall--to-morrow--you, you come so late.

Wreck'd--your train--or all but wreck'd? a shatter'd wheel? a vicious boy!
Good, this forward, you that preach it, is it well to wish you joy?

Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying in the Time,
City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime?

There among the glooming alleys Progress halts on palsied feet,
Crime and hunger cast our maidens by the thousand on the street.

There the Master scrimps his haggard sempstress of her daily bread,
There a single sordid attic holds the living and the dead.

There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted floor,
And the crowded couch of ****** in the warrens of the poor.

Nay, your pardon, cry your 'forward,' yours are hope and youth, but I--
Eighty winters leave the dog too lame to follow with the cry,

Lame and old, and past his time, and passing now into the night;
Yet I would the rising race were half as eager for the light.

Light the fading gleam of Even? light the glimmer of the dawn?
Aged eyes may take the growing glimmer for the gleam withdrawn.

Far away beyond her myriad coming changes earth will be
Something other than the wildest modern guess of you and me.

Earth may reach her earthly-worst, or if she gain her earthly-best,
Would she find her human offspring this ideal man at rest?

Forward then, but still remember how the course of Time will swerve,
Crook and turn upon itself in many a backward streaming curve.

Not the Hall to-night, my grandson! Death and Silence hold their own.
Leave the Master in the first dark hour of his last sleep alone.

Worthier soul was he than I am, sound and honest, rustic Squire,
Kindly landlord, boon companion--youthful jealousy is a liar.

Cast the poison from your *****, oust the madness from your brain.
Let the trampled serpent show you that you have not lived in vain.

Youthful! youth and age are scholars yet but in the lower school,
Nor is he the wisest man who never proved himself a fool.

Yonder lies our young sea-village--Art and Grace are less and less:
Science grows and Beauty dwindles--roofs of slated hideousness!

There is one old Hostel left us where they swing the Locksley shield,
Till the peasant cow shall **** the 'Lion passant' from his field.

Poo

In an instant, I’m back in that two-bedroom
apartment on Monte Park Ave, in old town Fair Oaks. Where family photos and live plants cluttered the already small space. It was a Monday night, February 13,2012, the day before Valentines Day, doing a routine visit to see my mama. The woman, who had birthed and loved me, as best as she could, with the tools life had equipped her with. This visit was different I could sense it. The moment I stepped foot onto that beige carpet and looked into her sunken green eyes. The cancer, cirrhosis and hepatitis C that had eaten at her liver the last two and a half years was coming to an end. My mother was a hardened woman, hardened by life. Crimes that had been committed against her and crimes she’d committed against herself continually ate at her. She was still able to shower an immense, unconditional love on us kids; in the days she was able to function, without the inevitable numbing. Those days didn’t last long, until she’d check out again.
As an adult the childhood ghosts of her past, were relived through her. So much to the point she allowed the destruction and pain to take ahold of her thoughts and entire being. The darkened corners of her life would begin to suffocate her.
As kids we’d often wake to her drunken blackouts after the town bars closed. She’d destroy the furniture in my home, demolishing anything within arms reach. Police would come often, we would hide…fearful…always fearful. She would sober up and check herself into rehab and do well for a while. We always hoped it would just one day end and she would be okay. The cycle just seemed to continue, for years, then decades. We would see fragments of her amazing personality, deep gentle heart and willingness to love hard and stay tough. Then it would be wiped away and knocked out of her when she’d run. Slowly, we lost pieces of her throughout the years.
My mom came to know a relationship with God in the last years of her life. I could sense a peace within her, but it was plain to see, she still carried regrets. Alcohol and drugs were her numbing medicine of choice to drown out the pain of the past. Even in her last days, she’d attempt to drink away the pain. I’d hold her feeble hands, sitting on her couch and pray with her. Pray for peace to finally consume her mind. Ever since I was a child, I had always felt like her mother. I wanted to save her, protect her, help her to see her worth in God.

It was just three months prior to her diagnosis, and I had found her cold and almost lifeless on her apartment floor. She had attempted suicide. It was late at night. I hadn’t heard from her in two days. I had that motherly gut wrenching feeling that something wasn’t right. Remembering the key I had to her apartment, I rushed out the door in only a bathrobe to check on her. I unlocked her front door; my heart hit the ground as I carefully turned the living room corner, to see her body, still, by the foot of her bed. In a numb haze, I checked her pulse and lifting her off the floor, I wailed and called on the name of Jesus, Jehovah Rapha – the God who heals, El – Shaddai – an almighty God. Peace flooded the room as I claimed this womans broken life and soul in his name. I laid her on her bed and held her, waiting for the ambulance to come. Those next four days in the hospital were torturous. As her body fought to rid itself of the toxins she’d consumed in an attempt to end the misery. Handcuffed to the hospital bed, I watched her sweat, cry and wail. I would pray. He’s here. He’s the healer. Even in that state God loved my mother, she was his child, even when she was most unlovable, he held her.

It is now, less than three years later, that I am watching her life slowly drain.
I can distinctly remember the aroma that I woke to, on Tuesday, February 14th, 2012. Having slept a horrid nights sleep, on my mothers’ living room floor the night before. I knew the end was near.
I would wake hourly to check on her, while she was asleep on her couch. Normally, she would take her meds every three hours. This night, she had slept more than ten straight hours. Drenched in sweat, she awoke. She called to me to help her to the bathroom. Her husband and I each held her arms and pulled her to her feet. Halfway to standing she began to hemorrhage blood. Gallons, literally gallons of blood spilled out of her. Her husband began to scream. We were never prepared for this. Never was hemorrhaging mentioned in all of the hospice nurse and doctors visits. Unable to call 911 due to the DNR (do not resuscitate) forms my mom signed. We slowly walked her to the bathroom. Blood poured out of her body in what seemed to be the longest walk ever, leaving a trail of what was left of her life down that hallway.
Expecting her to collapse, doing my doggone best to act calm as her husband cried and screamed frantically. We laid towels over the toilet and sat her down hoping to stop the hemorrhaging and call the hospice nurses to come to her home. Once I let go of the grip I had on my moms arm, I grabbed Drews face and ordered him to breathe and quit screaming. My mother sat, silent, she looked up at us, our hands and feet covered in blood, both frantically searching for the nurses numbers in our cell phones in a shaky mess. She quietly said, “please calm down”. I wrapped my arms around her, sitting there looking faint, expecting for her to hit the floor at any moment.
No child should ever have to see their mother bleed to death. I felt as though I was in a dream. Everything was hazy. Yet, God was there. I could only rely on his strength to keep me calm, to handle the situation, as Drew lost his mind and my mom was quickly losing life.
This couldn’t possibly be the end, I said to myself. Gently lifting her to her feet, we guided her down the remainder of the hall, to her bedroom; to the hospital bed she would spend her remaining days on. I stripped my mom of her blood-drenched clothing. Bathed and diapered her, as she had to me for many years as an infant. Those last days felt like an eternity. Going home to shower and take a short break from the death unfolding in front of my eyes, I was fearful she would slip away in my one-hour absence. I went to the store to buy my momma the last bouquet of roses I would ever give to her. I lit the candle next to her flowers. I played music, read and sang to her in those last hours. Massaged her hands and feet with lotion, as I’m sure she did to me as a baby. I prayed for her and over her. Watched her husbands’ heart break into a billion pieces, as he would walk around their apartment and cry. Still then, God was there.

“ With all lowliness and meekness, with long suffering, forbearing one another in love”.
Ephesians 4:2

Amidst the pain, the known regrets, fear and sadness, he’s the comforter. Not understanding why my eyes and heart had to burned with such tragic memories in watching her suffer, Gods peace lied there and he strengthens when we have none.

“ I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me”.
Phillipians 4:13

That final night, I had known. Sitting in the living room with one of my dearest friends Shawna and Drew,
I stood up “ we need to go check on her “ I said, as I stepped in her room, she was struggling to take her last breaths. Her husband ran to the far side of the bed and held onto her, wailing. I grabbed her hand and my friend grabbed mine.
She was fighting to breathe, her arms flailing.
I told her it was ok to go. To finally let go.
I fought to speak those words to her and to make them sound believable. Wishing she could just climb up off of that bed, healthy and smiling and hold me.
When she took her last breath. I watched her body lose its vibrancy. Shaken and strangled with anxiety, I threw up on the floor next to her bed. Having known the struggles and regrets this precious woman bore in her lifetime…and how at that moment…she’d have given anything to redo it.

“As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.”
Psalm 103:12

Do I know if my mother truly believed an all-consuming savior that died for us wholly loved her?
I don’t.
Do I have complete contentment that she passed with all the peace that God intended for us to have?
I don’t.

Which has led me to this. When the fateful day of my existence here on earth, ceases to watch another sunrise…what will my precious babies have to say of me?
I have nurtured every one of them; kissed chubby piggy toes and sang silly songs.
I, like many, have made heart-wrenching mistakes despite knowing Gods love for me.
All in an attempt to fill a God shaped whole in my heart.

“Those who rest in the shelter of the most high will find rest in the shadow of the almighty.”
Psalm 91:1

What will my beautiful daughters and handsome son be able to reflect upon, after my passing?
Perhaps this was his plan after all.

“It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes”
Psalm 119:71

He is in fact the author.

“O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off”
Psalm 139:1-2

Every intricate detail of my life, from the gory to treacherous to beautiful and serene was written.
God gives first, second, third, fourth, fifth , sixth and beyond chances, just waiting for me to see who I am…in him.
In this short 30 years of my life, I’ve fallen short.
What matters, is the here, the now and the tomorrow.
Can I actually attain all of the attributes of the woman in Proverbs 31?

“Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband also praiseth her”
Proverbs 31:28

Will my children be able to say this of me?
Will my sleepy eyed babies awake to drunken rages, as I did as a child…or a woman on her knees in prayer at suns rising?
I will strive daily, hourly, minute by minute to fight back the rising of my flesh, any hateful words that might ******* and distractions from what life is really created for…all on my knees before a God whose love consumes.

“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding
In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”
Proverbs 3:5-6

To all poets writing hourly poem
I offer my unqualified admiration
Place them with honor in my hall of fame
For truly glorifying our poetic nation.*

They keep the windows open never shut the mind’s door
Can’t suppress them schedules of work hectic daily chore
For who knows when the sky passes by stops dead the falling rain
Uncared a feeling rolls by goes unaddressed angst of pain!

Isn’t a rainbow painted out there on doorstep waiting the season
A bird is chirping the song of hope giving life a compelling reason
Isn’t a face waiting to be seen love pining to be released from a heart
Who knows when dies a river midstream each moment’s scenes depart!

The farther these poets go they dream for a farther reach
To hunt out the dark demons blind alley’s fearsome witch
Who knows when the light goes out burns out the fiery sun
This body turns to trails in dust with so much little yet done!

I will bring fire to thee.

Euripides.—’Androm’.

‘Eiros’.

Why do you call me Eiros?

‘Charmion’.

So henceforward will you always be called. You must forget,
too, my earthly name, and speak to me as Charmion.

‘Eiros’.

This is indeed no dream!

‘Charmion’.

Dreams are with us no more;—but of these mysteries
anon. I rejoice to see you looking life-like and rational.
The film of the shadow has already passed from off your
eyes. Be of heart, and fear nothing. Your allotted days of
stupor have expired, and to-morrow I will myself induct you
into the full joys and wonders of your novel existence.

‘Eiros’.

True—I feel no stupor—none at all. The wild
sickness and the terrible darkness have left me, and I hear
no longer that mad, rushing, horrible sound, like the “voice
of many waters.” Yet my senses are bewildered, Charmion,
with the keenness of their perception of the new.

‘Charmion’.

A few days will remove all this;—but I fully
understand you, and feel for you. It is now ten earthly
years since I underwent what you undergo—yet the
remembrance of it hangs by me still. You have now suffered
all of pain, however, which you will suffer in Aidenn.

‘Eiros’.

In Aidenn?

‘Charmion’.

In Aidenn.

‘Eiros’.

O God!—pity me, Charmion!—I am overburthened
with the majesty of all things—of the unknown now
known—of the speculative Future merged in the august
and certain Present.

‘Charmion’.

Grapple not now with such thoughts. To-morrow we will speak
of this. Your mind wavers, and its agitation will find
relief in the exercise of simple memories. Look not around,
nor forward—but back. I am burning with anxiety to
hear the details of that stupendous event which threw you
among us. Tell me of it. Let us converse of familiar things,
in the old familiar language of the world which has so
fearfully perished.

‘Eiros’.

Most fearfully, fearfully!—this is indeed no dream.

‘Charmion’.

Dreams are no more. Was I much mourned, my Eiros?

‘Eiros’.

Mourned, Charmion?—oh, deeply. To that last hour of
all there hung a cloud of intense gloom and devout sorrow
over your household.

‘Charmion’.

And that last hour—speak of it. Remember that, beyond
the naked fact of the catastrophe itself, I know nothing.
When, coming out from among mankind, I passed into Night
through the Grave—at that period, if I remember
aright, the calamity which overwhelmed you was utterly
unanticipated. But, indeed, I knew little of the speculative
philosophy of the day.

‘Eiros’.

The individual calamity was, as you say, entirely
unanticipated; but analogous misfortunes had been long a
subject of discussion with astronomers. I need scarce tell
you, my friend, that, even when you left us, men had agreed
to understand those passages in the most holy writings which
speak of the final destruction of all things by fire as
having reference to the orb of the earth alone, But in
regard to the immediate agency of the ruin, speculation had
been at fault from that epoch in astronomical knowledge in
which the comets were divested of the terrors of flame. The
very moderate density of these bodies had been well
established. They had been observed to pass among the
satellites of Jupiter without bringing about any sensible
alteration either in the masses or in the orbits of these
secondary planets. We had long regarded the wanderers as
vapory creations of inconceivable tenuity, and as altogether
incapable of doing injury to our substantial globe, even in
the event of contact. But contact was not in any degree
dreaded; for the elements of all the comets were accurately
known. That among them we should look for the agency
of the threatened fiery destruction had been for many years
considered an inadmissible idea. But wonders and wild
fancies had been of late days strangely rife among mankind;
and, although it was only with a few of the ignorant that
actual apprehension prevailed, upon the announcement by
astronomers of a new comet, yet this announcement was
generally received with I know not what of agitation and
mistrust.

The elements of the strange orb were immediately calculated,
and it was at once conceded by all observers that its path,
at perihelion would bring it into very close proximity with
the earth. There were two or three astronomers of secondary
note who resolutely maintained that a contact was
inevitable. I cannot very well express to you the effect of
this intelligence upon the people. For a few short days they
would not believe an assertion which their intellect, so
long employed among worldly considerations, could not in any
manner grasp. But the truth of a vitally important fact soon
makes its way into the understanding of even the most
stolid. Finally, all men saw that astronomical knowledge
lies not, and they awaited the comet. Its approach was not
at first seemingly rapid, nor was its appearance of very
unusual character. It was of a dull red, and had little
perceptible train. For seven or eight days we saw no
material increase in its apparent diameter, and but a
partial alteration in its color. Meantime, the ordinary
affairs of men were discarded, and all interest absorbed in
a growing discussion instituted by the philosophic in
respect to the cometary nature. Even the grossly ignorant
aroused their sluggish capacities to such considerations.
The learned now gave their intellect—their
soul—to no such points as the allaying of fear, or to
the sustenance of loved theory. They sought—they
panted for right views. They groaned for perfected
knowledge. Truth arose in the purity of her strength
and exceeding majesty, and the wise bowed down and adored.

That material injury to our globe or to its inhabitants
would result from the apprehended contact was an opinion
which hourly lost ground among the wise; and the wise were
now freely permitted to rule the reason and the fancy of the
crowd. It was demonstrated that the density of the comet’s
nucleus was far less than that of our rarest gas; and
the harmless passage of a similar visitor among the
satellites of Jupiter was a point strongly insisted upon,
and which served greatly to allay terror. Theologists, with
an earnestness fear-enkindled, dwelt upon the biblical
prophecies, and expounded them to the people with a
directness and simplicity of which no previous instance had
been known. That the final destruction of the earth must be
brought about by the agency of fire, was urged with a spirit
that enforced everywhere conviction; and that the comets
were of no fiery nature (as all men now knew) was a truth
which relieved all, in a great measure, from the
apprehension of the great calamity foretold. It is
noticeable that the popular prejudices and ****** errors in
regard to pestilences and wars—errors which were wont
to prevail upon every appearance of a comet—were now
altogether unknown, as if by some sudden convulsive exertion
reason had at once hurled superstition from her throne. The
feeblest intellect had derived vigor from excessive
interest.

What minor evils might arise from the contact were points of
elaborate question. The learned spoke of slight geological
disturbances, of probable alterations in climate, and
consequently in vegetation; of possible magnetic and
electric influences. Many held that no visible or
perceptible effect would in any manner be produced. While
such discussions were going on, their subject gradually
approached, growing larger in apparent diameter, and of a
more brilliant lustre. Mankind grew paler as it came. All
human operations were suspended.

There was an epoch in the course of the general sentiment
when the comet had attained, at length, a size surpassing
that of any previously recorded visitation. The people now,
dismissing any lingering hope that the astronomers were
wrong, experienced all the certainty of evil. The chimerical
aspect of their terror was gone. The hearts of the stoutest
of our race beat violently within their bosoms. A very few
days suffered, however, to merge even such feelings in
sentiments more unendurable. We could no longer apply to the
strange orb any accustomed thoughts. Its
historical attributes had disappeared. It oppressed us
with a hideous novelty of emotion. We saw it not as
an astronomical phenomenon in the heavens, but as an incubus
upon our hearts and a shadow upon our brains. It had taken,
with unconceivable rapidity, the character of a gigantic
mantle of rare flame, extending from horizon to horizon.

Yet a day, and men breathed with greater freedom. It was
clear that we were already within the influence of the
comet; yet we lived. We even felt an unusual elasticity of
frame and vivacity of mind. The exceeding tenuity of the
object of our dread was apparent; for all heavenly objects
were plainly visible through it. Meantime, our vegetation
had perceptibly altered; and we gained faith, from this
predicted circumstance, in the foresight of the wise. A wild
luxuriance of foliage, utterly unknown before, burst out
upon every vegetable thing.

Yet another day—and the evil was not altogether upon
us. It was now evident that its nucleus would first reach
us. A wild change had come over all men; and the first sense
of pain was the wild signal for general lamentation
and horror. The first sense of pain lay in a rigorous
construction of the breast and lungs, and an insufferable
dryness of the skin. It could not be denied that our
atmosphere was radically affected; the conformation of this
atmosphere and the possible modifications to which it might
be subjected, were now the topics of discussion. The result
of investigation sent an electric thrill of the intensest
terror through the universal heart of man.

It had been long known that the air which encircled us was a
compound of oxygen and nitrogen gases, in the proportion of
twenty-one measures of oxygen and seventy-nine of nitrogen
in every one hundred of the atmosphere. Oxygen, which was
the principle of combustion, and the vehicle of heat, was
absolutely necessary to the support of animal life, and was
the most powerful and energetic agent in nature. Nitrogen,
on the contrary, was incapable of supporting either animal
life or flame. An unnatural excess of oxygen would result,
it had been ascertained, in just such an elevation of the
animal spirits as we had latterly experienced. It was the
pursuit, the extension of the idea, which had engendered
awe. What would be the result of a total extraction of
the nitrogen? A combustion irresistible, all-devouring,
omni-prevalent, immediate;—the entire fulfilment, in
all their minute and terrible details, of the fiery and
horror-inspiring denunciations of the prophecies of the Holy
Book.

Why need I paint, Charmion, the now disenchained frenzy of
mankind? That tenuity in the comet which had previously
inspired us with hope, was now the source of the bitterness
of despair. In its impalpable gaseous character we clearly
perceived the consummation of Fate. Meantime a day again
passed—bearing away with it the last shadow of Hope.
We gasped in the rapid modification of the air. The red
blood bounded tumultuously through its strict channels. A
furious delirium possessed all men; and with arms rigidly
outstretched towards the threatening heavens, they trembled
and shrieked aloud. But the nucleus of the destroyer was now
upon us;—even here in Aidenn I shudder while I speak.
Let me be brief—brief as the ruin that overwhelmed.
For a moment there was a wild lurid light alone, visiting
and penetrating all things. Then—let us bow down,
Charmion, before the excessive majesty of the great
God!—then, there came a shouting and pervading sound,
as if from the mouth itself of HIM; while the whole
incumbent mass of ether in which we existed, burst at once
into a species of intense flame, for whose surpassing
brilliancy and all-fervid heat even the angels in the high
Heaven of pure knowledge have no name. Thus ended all.

1.

Like a white snowdrop in the spring
From child to girl I grew,
And thought no thought, and heard no word
That was not pure and true.

2.

And when I came to seventeen,
And life was fair and free,
A suitor, by my father's leave,
Was brought one day to me.

3.

“Make me the happiest man on earth,”
He whispered soft and low.
My mother told me it was right
I was too young to know.

4.

And then they twined my bridal wreath
And placed it on my brow.
It seems like fifty years ago —
And I am twenty now.

5.

My star, that barely rose, is set;
My day of hope is done —
My woman's life of love and joy —
Ere it has scarce begun.

6.

Hourly I die — I do not live —
Though still so young and strong.
No dumb brute from his brother brutes
Endures such wanton wrong.

7.

A smouldering shame consumes me now —
It poisons all my peace;
An inward torment of reproach
That never more will cease.

8.

O how my spirit shrinks and sinks
Ere yet the light is gone!
What creeping terrors chill my blood
As each black night draws on!

9.

I lay me down upon my bed,
A prisoner on the rack,
And suffer dumbly, as I must,
Till the kind day comes back.

10.

Listening from heavy hour to hour
To hear the church- clock toll —
A guiltless ******* in flesh,
A murderess in soul.

11.

Those church- bells chimed the marriage chimes
When he was wed to me,
And they must knell a funeral knell
Ere I again am free.

12.

I did not hate him then; in faith
I vowed the vow “I will;”
Were I his mate, and not his slave,
I could perform it still.

13.

But, crushed in these relentless bonds
I blindly helped to tie,
With one way only for escape,
I pray that he may die.

14.

O to possess myself once more,
Myself so stained and maimed!
O to make pure these shuddering limbs
That loveless lust has shamed!

15.

But beauty cannot be restored
Where such a blight has been,
And all the rivers in the world
Can never wash me clean.

16.

I go to church; I go to court;
No breath of scandal flaws
The lustre of my fair repute;
For I obey the laws.

17.

My ragged sister of the street,
Marked for the world's disgrace,
Scarce dares to lift her sinful eyes
To the great lady's face.

18.

She hides in shadows as I pass —
On me the sunbeams shine;
Yet, in the sight of God, her stain
May be less black than mine.

19.

Maybe she gave her all for love,
And did not count the cost;
If so, her crown of womanhood
Was not ignobly lost.

20.

Maybe she wears those wretched rags,
And starves from door to door,
To keep her body for her own
Since it may love no more.

21.

If so, in spite of church and law,
She is more pure than I;
The latchet of those broken shoes
I am not fit to tie.

22.

That hungry baby at her breast —
Sign of her fallen state —
Nature, who would but mock at mine,
Has made legitimate.

23.

Poor little “love- child” — spurned and scorned,
Whom church and law disown,
Thou hadst thy birthright when the seed
Of thy small life was sown.

24.

O Nature, give no child to me,
Whom Love must ne'er embrace!
Thou knowest I could not bear to look
On its reproachful face.

Cant you hear their cries
Of pain. Of suffering.
The echoes of malicious crimes.
Or have we become unaffected by the images
As history repeats itself one more time

Some where down the line
Humanity has been lost
As ignorance prevails, and their conscious dies
Who is left to preserve and protect innocent lives

As we sit watching the events unfolding
And the tears of both young and old
Like the missiles, do they fall

Have the oppressors forgotten, it was these people
who gave them shelter when they were the oppressed
United we were then to end the brutality and maltreatment
Now the tables have turned
We ignorantly refuse to believe it is happening again

For the innocents the fight continues
Their faith and their strength. It never falters
As they take back what is theirs.
Hoping that someone helps and intervenes
Giving back what's theirs, bringing them peace

The fear and dread
The weeping souls
The blessed land
Forgotten and torn

They fight the battle
as we look on
The hourly struggle
of the abandoned ones.


© maria.who

(Comment below please)

Someone has been churning butter in my stomach
And sometimes I wish to stab a knife into me and tear out this awful feeling
Because it happens daily
But more recently, it happens hourly
And the churning butter bends and twists my stomach out of place
And my heart loses oxygen hundreds of times a day
And my face goes pale with discomfort
And I can't put a cast on and sit out during gym class
It's not an injury
It's not a problem
It's not
a problem
It's
Not
A
Problem
It's just
How I live
And the churning butter
is what I live with daily
But more recently,
hourly

String pickers,
violinists
Poets
Bad Boys
The lot of you
We fall in Love
with you
a thousand times a day
We listen to your songs
poems
Voices,
over and over
Common thread in crystals
cloud bursts of feeling
that you each sharpen
daily
You
Bad Boys Of Poetry
You
cut we
black butterflies
and
dark diamond
poetesses
daily,
hourly
We butterfly bats
dance,
sing
write!
Yet,
you
Bad Boys Of Poetry
Still
Lie, there in
to your ownselves,
and say
"No one loves me,
I'm alone
Forgotten"
Well,
No.
We each see
as we wish
Pluck your strings!
Sing your songs!
But know,
you're LOVED
A thousand times a day
By black butterflies
and dark diamonds

Poetesses
~only a poetess
A

On April 26th, 372 B.C. Plato was the first man to inflict injury upon his own dreams.
Not the forms casting shadows in his cave, his literal dreams.
At 6:35 a.m. the impish snarl of a water ***** crept into his Utopia of an
all-you-can-eat gyro cart overturned at the corner of his street and roused him
back to consciousness. The ingenious design of his Clepsydra quite obviously complete,
Aristotle came running with the awkward stride of a sleepwalking adolescent
to see what his master had done. When he arrived he saw flying,
two pots of water, an air-compressing submersible chamber and one water ***** reed.
Aristotle quickly collected the shattered pieces and noted
that this broken pottery was more real than time itself.

On September 21st, 712 A.D. a small village just outside the boundaries of
Chang'an, China came dangerously close to taking the life of the palace
astronomer/inventor/sleepyhead. Crowding around the door of Yi Xing, the
townspeople tore their robes and wailed for him to put a stop to the
incessant clanging. Xing, who had apparently overslept and was still
clinging to morsels of fading dreams about his young mistress, stuffed his
face into his pillow, muttering eureka, after first having chucked the
two clay pots, handful of stones and plate-sized gong out the front door,
much to the amusement of the assembly of drooping eyelids and torn pajamas.

In the year 1235 A.D. tortured residents of Baghdad began associating their
daily and nightly times for prayer with the ringing of their eardrums from
uninvited chimes.

In 1493 St. Mark's Clock-tower polluted the once-pure Venetian air with
hourly reminders that we are all yet one hour closer to our inevitable death
and the priests of the day called it humility.

Levi Hutchins of New Hampshire turned to a pine cabinet, brass clock and
mechanical gears in 1787, and for the first time gave himself the ability to
choose when he would hate the morning.

In 1847, French inventor Antoine Redier began making money off of people's
early morning auditory masochism.

Lew Wallace, the morning after completing his masterpiece novel "Ben Hur,"
awoke with a fiendish beeping in his ear and proceeded to invent the paradox
of the snooze button.

In Spring of 1942 the war in Europe raged and all U.S. alarm clock production ceased.

In the Spring of 1943 well-rested factory men, confronted by their foreman
upon arrival at 9:15, erupted the words "my alarm clock is broken,"
forever placing the excuse in the deep pockets of slackers
world-wide.

To all of these respected men of our history
Who have thought with their hands to create
The foundation of a society drowning in Starbucks,
I wish to express my sincerest ingratitude.

I lie awake in bed at night,
Licking the bitter taste of reality from my cheeks,
In the company of Plato, Lew Wallace and Yi Xing,
Wondering what dreams will be stolen from me.

Life is a mandala!
Everything is a mandala!
-oh my God, I can use my lungs-
Nothing lasts and nothing
matters, however lovely
or terrible

Murderous fingers ripping
unimposing string of
yarn, row by
hourly row

It was also my violent heart that broke,
falling down the front hall stairs.
It was also a message I never spoke,
calling, riser after riser, who cares

about you, who cares, splintering up
the hip that was merely made of crystal,
the post of it and also the cup.
I exploded in the hallway like a pistol.

So I fell apart. So I came all undone.
Yes. I was like a box of dog bones.
But now they've wrapped me in like a nun.
Burst like firecrackers! Held like stones!

What a feat sailing queerly like Icarus
until the tempest undid me and I broke.
The ambulance drivers made such a fuss.
But when I cried, "Wait for my courage!" they smoked

and then they placed me, tied me up on their plate,
and wheeled me out to their coffin, my nest.
Slowly the siren slowly the hearse, sedate
as a dowager. At the E. W. they cut off my dress.

I cried, "Oh Jesus, help me! Oh Jesus Christ!"
and the nurse replied, "Wrong name. My name
is Barbara," and hung me in an odd device,
a buck's extension and a Balkan overhead frame.

The orthopedic man declared,
"You'll be down for a year." His scoop. His news.
He opened the skin. He scraped. He pared
and drilled through bone for his four-inch screws.

That takes brute strength like pushing a cow
up hill. I tell you, it takes skill
and bedside charm and all that know how.
The body is a **** hard thing to ****.

But please don't touch or jiggle my bed.
I'm Ethan Frome's wife. I'll move when I'm able.
The T. V. hangs from the wall like a moose head.
I hide a pint of bourbon in my bedside table.

A bird full of bones, now I'm held by a sand bag.
The fracture was twice. The fracture was double.
The days are horizontal. The days are a drag.
All of the skeleton in me is in trouble.

Across the hall is the bedpan station.
The ***** and stools pass hourly by my head
in silver bowls. They flush in unison
in the autoclave. My one dozen roses are dead.

The have ceased to *******. They hang
there like little dried up blood clots.
And the heart too, that *******, how it sang
once. How it thought it could call the shots!

Understand what happened the day I fell.
My heart had stammered and hungered at
a marriage feast until the angel of hell
turned me into the punisher, the acrobat.

My bones are loose as clothespins,
as abandoned as dolls in a toy shop
and my heart, old hunger motor, with its sins
revved up like an engine that would not stop.

And now I spend all day taking care
of my body, that baby. Its cargo is scarred.
I anoint the bedpan. I brush my hair,
waiting in the pain machine for my bones to get hard,

for the soft, soft bones that were laid apart
and were ******* together. They will knit.
And the other corpse, the fractured heart,
I feed it piecemeal, little chalice. I'm good to it.

Yet lie a fire alarm it waits to be known.
It is wired. In it many colors are stored.
While my body's in prison, heart cells alone
have multiplied. My bones are merely bored

with all this waiting around. But the heart,
this child of myself that resides in the flesh,
this ultimate signature of the me, the start
of my blindness and sleep, builds a death creche.

The figures are placed at the grave of my bones.
All figures knowing it is the other death
they came for. Each figure standing alone.
The heart burst with love and lost its breath.

This little town, this little country is real
and thus it is so of the post and the cup
and thus of the violent heart. The zeal
of my house doth eat me up.

In seductions of ******
wisps of alarm, tongues fly
catching fire, their croaks
are red-headed matchsticks.

Intrepid hourly, the
blanketed white harassed
the appointed locum, the
cashmere buds of tobacco.

The open mouths adhere to
the King of Limbs, the
experimental corsages that
— bloom —
into existence.

There is a space between
all the noise where
my fetal poise can reside,

forever holding,
holding on,

forever holding,
holding on.

I spit that non fiction, when i say life is my addiction, I'm such a contradiction;
you can call me COURAGE the cowardly. don't OVERSTEP your boundary.
the lames seem to bow to me, and if life were a *****. i'd charge her by the hourly.
i feel FREE like a SEED, in the wind
there's no need to pretend
that no thought is more electric than your intent, i intend
to manifest success. my game infrared,
sounds like a different dialect, fresher than disinfect, dangerous like Russian roulette.
when its us or them
the beast against men
melanin augments; to increase my inner G for the main event!

Misery is the cruelest companion
Cultist killer
Of the elite
Emotional destroyer
Part-time
Full-time
Every time
Depression hits
Hourly
Monthly
Yearly
Sporadic fits
Or eternal duration
The darkest god
The deepest fraud
Prince paralyzer
Possibly inspiration
But in end
Can be the end

Her fairest words not an apology,
Words that bother me, eating her up,
'All that your are is swallowing me; doubting me,
feeling cowardly:' But not what you want to be:
For daily days so hourly, judging men horizontally,
screaming in your head 'acknowledge me,'
'And just apologise to me':

Back when the world was loving,
You for your chest, interests in *******;
They're spending pays on and invest,
Leaving children eggs on your nest:
None of them did impress, but only did undress:
Leaving your hair in a mess, and moving onto the next:
With their sins stealing your bless: To Pastors,
how do you confess? The gave you more,
but made you feel like less:

Child how do you love;
As you're sick of what some of
Them speak of when, they say it's young love?
Taking your portion, and happiest emotions,
Bare on your flesh like erosion,
Rubbing against you like- Their body lotion:

I do try to love you for you,
But can't relate to what you've been through:
They've stuck their hurts on you-
Like glue, more than one time or two:
They used you, abused you, tossed you,
away, straight after they ******* you: Threw you,
Found their release through you: Lining up,
To view you in a-
Queue, fitting their sizes in a small shoe:

I now understand why,
You are who you are in the first verse.
Giving them your worst, from those who
stole your worth: Hands in a bag-
Stealing inside your pursue. So hard for you
To converse, hoping to be anyone else in the entire universe:
I see how it hurts, and how quick you curse:
Told to move forward; trying to have,
All your pains and struggles go in reverse:
They gave you their love by force,
And all of the times it did leave a hurt:
Without remorse, making you their main course.

So as I write this verse,
With tears through the pain of your teen years:
Those darkest moments and your fears. All of those,
Left you after a night shift; shifting their gears:
But I'll try my best dearest sister,
To be right here. When those demons-
Try creeping back in: When the lights are so dim:
But I don't know where you've been,  
But I'll share all of your hurts like a twin.

Raise your chin;
Clear you're skin,
And help you fix what's broken from within.

Pen this verse-
For all of them to know;
That you don't have to face the hurt alone:
Don't feel like you're all on your own,
You could be whole, even if the process is slow:
But I'll help piece back together your shattered Soul.

Sweet twining hedgeflowers wind-stirred in no wise
On this June day; and hand that clings in hand:—
Still glades; and meeting faces scarcely fann’d:—
An osier-odoured stream that draws the skies
Deep to its heart; and mirrored eyes in eyes:—
Fresh hourly wonder o’er the Summer land
Of light and cloud; and two souls softly spann’d
With one o’erarching heaven of smiles and sighs:—

Even such their path, whose bodies lean unto
Each other’s visible sweetness amorously,—
Whose passionate hearts lean by Love’s high decree
Together on his heart for ever true,
As the cloud-foaming firmamental blue
Rests on the blue line of a foamless sea.

my life is beautiful, not realistic.
yesterday, i arrived on neptune
wearing big boots and dignity
the horizon was a nightmare of question marks
and gloomy witches;
i escaped from the religious enema and
pegged a choir boy on my way out.
i am no longer a pygmy goat on a foolish leash,
i take my paranoia seriously.
my journals guide me to a ruptured corpse,
never censored.
i have the ability to be given away on a whim,
but i am becoming a famous soldier, an intoxicating
ghost of dogma.
my dreams are beautiful, not realistic.
hallelujah, the hobos are wearing bathrobes,
the ****** pillheads are anointed with ****** and sewer cleaners.
i see a goblin grave advertised by
luscious lips and fishlike shoulders.
the texture of my dream is kaleidoscope and silver,
haunted by a fat sherriff who cuts the throat of the jukebox queen.
i have a personal god, and on her i bestow this passionate kiss,
i have a favorite enemy, with no goals and without ambition.
im sorry, i don't know any happy songs,
only the movement of her young sensitive thighs and
a nymph with an hourly rate.
i am a buffoon with a blugeoned harmonica and
weapons of sugar.
my life is beautiful, not realistic.

Wind swept

Wild places the grass it puts on a veritable orchestra of movement as it undulates to the power of the breeze that passes
Mountain meadows splashed with a profusion of flowers they jiggle as if there tickled about something or other
The crest of the hill bordered with trees sloping down the hill children are running reminiscent of Jack and Jill
This utopia of nature sets aside the hurly burly the curvature of the hills still the wind hold the sun just right you it invites

Cross these pasture lands the feeding ground of many cattle and sheep the pride of the farmer who keeps
Inexorably bound by breed and creed for centuries this way of life flourishes among these native grasses
Tender shoots these roots give of their riches the sun and rain gives them a time to reign with joy all reaps
Pleasure in the walk letting fingers glide over the heads of tall grasses the silent telling of harmony filled poise

Future generations will be brought to these shadowed grounds they too will by their lives express and know contentment
Hourly they hold in sod that has known the breath of time as it has passed time and time again it enlivens breaks fourth
Sturdy and resplendent it shows all its dependability the same respect settlers knew is found the builders of this continent
Long shadows grow upon earths shoulders she knows the good and the bad but through resilience remains unconquered

The distant mountain stands eternal guard, it affects rainfall, mutes the winds force guarantying a peaceful valley
Perpetuity is taught in this land tomorrows unfold from days gone by with regularity they build and keep the way open
Stewardship the blessed hope working in harmony with all that surrounds at days end this will be the final sum and tally
The herdsman knows the time he invests it well always with broad vision does he act in this wisdom all will be victorious