Epigraph in a Burned Book

Flatterers Among the Roses

A Mocumentary of the Sun

Blank Generation,
or,
the Death of the Muse,
NO, HARDLY

Outing

Confused, harassed, stammering, half-mad, 
I arrived at a mountain stream's small source alone
Whose each mere moment of dropping flowing 
By dropping more intensely flows. Heart's-blood
Stuttered along the tongue of solvent air
Following out the stream's wanderings apace
As if my liquid's hush through every cataract
And canyon-enhancing rivulet did move;
What weariness then penetrated every limb
Which had flung itself the whole blue morning through       
Like a ceaseless wheel! I lay a lonesome hour
Upon a table of stone spined just so long
As myself from dead heel to skull-top
Imagining its travel! By my veins
The moss-indentured rock with iron force
Is cracked, a hammering flow enveloping the mass
With pale empurplings and smooth-prompting bulbs of glass       
That maturer nature had given a more rugged touch.

So I lay sun-warmed upon that human stone,
Neither foot nor head beyond its grating cradle,
Until all that made me I un-made
Then wove again together in eye and ear;
As if sunlight spoke and sound gave voice in light,
All these before me in hazeless dazzle floated free
And I consigned them to their Liberty!
My rushing emerging blood swept past
Cochlea and ear-drum in bird-like thrum:
Stream on stream ascended purer air in song
Til all was bathed by part, the unaccustomed whole
Of oceans leaping from my spring! each martlet that sang       
Told some note of me; myself had stained
Sky's unstarred majesty with pinks, and in a wink
Sent each sense sharpened as it spread
From azure zones of whispered fire
To the old pond's own cool shadow of repose
Til every busy sound was somewhat tinged with red
And every shifting leaf, dew-shadowed as they were,
Burned outlined by that bright delight
Their own laughing motion shucked from them in sound.       

Then a purple rain, it seemed, descended
In answering haloes shaken from the sun
And broke in its descent to mist, hallowing all.
No part of the under-sky receded
From that pursuant touch,-- but rather
Rose to its own undoing in erotic rapture
As drones to their honey-loving maiden-queen
Lift translucent wings in flight;
Leaf and leaf in murmuring applause
Stretched on each twig-end toward that sky!
The stone that held my casing seemed more up-raised       
And the low appearance of the swimming sun
Took on a duskier and a closer tone
As if it wished to immerse itself again!
Strange mist was everywhere, endowing each
Glowing glen that lay as little as a lens.
Strange mist had wrapped the very bowsprit of the rock!     
My own skin was mist-engrafted!
Within, my own departing heart,---
So whirled with-in and -out with the luminous,---
As pulsant globe and center now resolved.

And on this thought my mind no longer moved,
By spells of rapt intransigence inly held,
Til all that had its faultless action once impelled
Conjoined to conjure pause; sweet was the wind
That kissed my aching lungs with such sweet  breath!
All piny, with some sunny hawthorne scenting  mixed,       
---Even still that air is fresh within me,
Even still do I desire the clearness I had then!---
For one hour's welter of such unwon wealth!---
For then I had found out-- in clearness still
Do I see it!-- motive of moon and sun and sincerer stars,     
Our perpetual guest, the unsullied source of glory
That limned my out-flowing veins in rivers'-light!
Out, out of the very center where my spirit slept
Flood called out to flood and flood responded
Out-pouring Life! there, there are the harmonies!
There the endless systems counted back to One!
There the measureless Space contented
To a water-drop! There echoings on echoings
By their velvet source are hushed!
Anguish and insistence vanquished by a touch!
Nightmares and chimeras chastized by a love
The soul's own shaping power makes animate!

Slaves of Glory

For Tenor Semblance, Who's dead