Desperate exigencies of sifted light 
      Straight radiant depart a wilted soul 
      Not wrapped by the felony touch of dust 
      But uplifted in scourged golds infolding her 
5     As blood scarves defend a weeping head from death. 
      So much is hefted out of this sepulchral singing 
      My blindfish heart rives in satiate dwells 
      To swig until christened or drunk enough 
      To swell my thin monody to her coral repose, 
10    Flecking lucent spectrums of heaven's lacewing weeping. 
      Shirred angel, unsplint this shinplaster self 
      Outfaced by your blue radiant weeps, and 
      Take this shunt offering that limes the raving grave! 
      Charivari mourners cluster the lorn wake; 
15    I melt to a shrive, retouched. Too often retouched.

      Storms have had passage, and the summer impinged, 
      The rain has come and gone dry again. 
      And the suffering flood, and now, the tide 
      Is sunken that was whelming yesterday, 
5     A hard rain broken on winter stalks, forcing an effect. 
      And all with all, stand conjoined, and healing, 
      That stood in deep need of repair before. 
      The rail station turns emptily, and larks alive 
      Diving undo the blackberry bush, the hidden yew. 
10    Sparse this vegetation that held us 
      Warm in the slack light of forgotten afternoons, 
      Cool a little, and vacantly hot in sunlight. 
      Summer's tongue has healed the blisters 
      A sun of sand had held against us. 
15         October's moment, at the waste ends of our fashions, 
      Made stark the pleasures of our silks and satins. 
      Mrs Ormolu, cheeking her fur in the tea-shop, 
      Struggles splendour from her subterranean moods. 
      Barbed by the Telex in an appointed room 
20    We moved, at evening, to the forecaster's gloom 
      Exchanging gins at the slender end of an ormolu table 
      Heavy with the commerce of breathless opinions. 
      O cerveaux enfantins! sullen in afterthought 
      Before the faultless midnight had so devoutly trapped us; 
25    And still we moved, as like as unlike, 
      Day's churn whirling the black with white, 
      Gold and unholden, jetted with ebonies and ruby blacks, 
      As like as unlike in longing day's extended pursuit, 
      Spotless, the time that revolved around us.... 
30         Have you seen the various papers with  
                signatures attatched? 
      Various hands had signed them in red and black. 
      Swift to the nosedive of a bike I had held them, 
      Stocks and certificates unleashed by the warring bell. 
35    Brothers like cruxifixes charged blood out of my eyes, 
      Brother against brother with nothing to tell. 
      I have made my purchase, Thank You, and will take  
                my fall. 
      Sudden staring provoked an impaitient ending. 
40         Where's the washed glory of the infant day, 
      Diadems of wishes, stolen sparks under matted clay? 
      Dark leaves spurt their aching blades against us, 
      Warm blushes cluster. Dark, dark, and the eyes gone golden 
      Which held us with their simplicity in the morning. 
45    Grasses fountain at the salty marge 
      Bringing green to the barrenness, where once 
      Nothing sighed, not even the dirt, to hide our bones. 
      Endless grasses, endless grasses. Endless, endless. 
                Water was expected, 
50              Both before and after; 
                No flood had undone perfection, 
                Nourished in the water's laughter. 
           Pastor and miracle-boy, tell me again 
      What we must do about what has been done. 
55    He came to me in direst confidence 
      And went away elated. 
                             What, what had you told him? 
      He remained the source of his own confusion, same 
      As Tiresias, who I'd treated in the Alps, the same 
60    As Joe Campbell, whose methods he employed. 
      Sow the seeds of terror or ecstasy without regard. 
      Light intertwined had saved me, light 
      Blotted. How many hands do you have, how many? 
      I am exhausted. I am no pastor, but a man 
65    Desperate to aid others. Do not call again. 
      It is breaking up. Its breaking up. 
                             Et puis, et puis encore? 
      Look in the hymnal provided, if you must, for comfort. 
                Lullam, lullay. 
70              Green dust has borne the body away. 
           And now the golden corpse lies laced with silver blood 
      Under teeming Tiamat. O cold momement of touch 
      Elapsed in the mist and foliage. 
           Unclasp 
75    Manipulated Nature. Body shall follow 
      Where the mind must wend. Abhorrent, obedient, 
      Parting the waters an alert spirit dives, 
      Divining. The fervent river's circle had pushed us 
      Out onto the fields of praise. Us Albiginsians 
80    Stigmataed in the ditch, slaughtered, 
      In the garden plot of sunlight. Swept light--- 
      And the passage in snow assured 
      That had been doubtful. Unpack your heart first 
      The sherpa instructed, and no loss can find you, 
85    Knowing divinity a human inclination. 
           The moment of simple touch had come 
      Where I had hesitated in the garden, 
      Dawdling my purples. When I look up it is night. 
      Always. Always the same. Same night. Same star, 
90    Prim Argentine! We had put ship to ground 
      In the dream. And the waters closed over us. 
           No renewal in passion. That is the lie. 
      Green everlasting. By prayer like rainfall I shall make 
      This mountain of bones my own, clasping. 
95    Lullam lullay 
      Clasping 
           2. The World Apprehends 
      The world apprehends some deep, familiar change 
      Autumn to autumn, and spring ever cresting Spring... 
100   But is it what I apprehend in longing still 
      To push to its effect in some stranger breast 
      Beating wild soliloquies of blood upon the night! 
      O world never answering the claims I throw, 
      O world that in seclusion separate and cold 
105   Meditates nothing, on nothing renews and grows 
      To what bleak granduer spiraling the void! 
      Am I forced by some injury or defect in sight 
      To reflect the broody moods black waters 
      Uprising, as if within me, bear to the flood? 
110   Black as the answerless mirror at midnight spied, 
      Cold as that pulseless hand invisible 
      Pressed to the midnight face, depression afflicts 
      And will not quit: Cannot some spring face 
      Flood ever-fresh the weary sense again? 
115        Why must every flamelike intent of love and joy 
      Feel the barrier of single consciousness  
      Imposed? Alighting love expanding without fault 
      Through all the bent glass this waiting world 
      Wavers composed of, send light to unify, 
120   Warmth to make solid as an afternoon forgotten 
      What hate or sorrow in dark solitude have kept 
      Untouching! 
                   Is not the interpenetrant 
      Sense itself all of loving touches composed? 
125   What wavering brush of its canvas deprived 
      Ever painted beauty right?  
                                 A song among the rocks 
      Falls effectless as a dying wind, heralding 
      Nothing to a mass insensate as itself. 
130        Walk, o light! O walk! 
      Light that can elcipse 
      The sky and Time 
      Whose back is ever curving, 
      Beaten down! 
135        Stand a stark 
      Individual alive 
      Past the eclipsing curve 
      Severing Death descends 
      In one blow! 
140        The torpid moon above his back 
      With every star it kills 
      but grows more black; 
      Hideous horn 
      Dwindling. 
145        Pierce what darkness, 
      Abiding ever, cannot abide; 
      Take the temptless spirit's 
      Tentative lamp 
      Ever entering 
150        And enter the undarkened side. 
      Enter it. There 
      Shadowless jewels are lingering.... 
      And I am caught questioning 
      And I cannot hide. 
155   The light was a light 
      Of cadmium floresced 
      Or distraught plumage 
      Harassed into a white crest. 
           Light tremblant in ecstatic sanction, 
160   Day's praises, and night's intermittent death, 
      Combine in the true tenor of thy gentle eye 
      Sighing all sight past far earth's transparency 
      And faded emblems harping after life 
      Which instead present to thy penetrating eye 
165   Wondrous loving wells of the visionary real 
      Upheld in tenderous airs of your own breath 
      Owing nothing to world's corroding realm 
      But bringing ecstasy ever out of faultless heart's 
      And warmly obeying mind's one work of wish---- 
170   Desire undying for each charmed instant's 
      Momentary touch, a hand upon my eyes so clear! 
           3. Epithalium 
      Before the nuptials, cymbals, symphonies, hush 
      Crash of love, hymn-praises, sermons, laughs, 
175   Filthy snickerings in the red, rowdy pews,  
      Song-sighs choiring a crush of one from these  
      Million-loving tongues, faith saying fleshes 
      Supposing combed words in a racking wind's stir 
      That tears away all, and in thronged All suspends 
180   This auroraed bride's brindled veil swaying simple 
      As kisses, warm as dew, and undone as air, 
      Morning-lifted in outrageous altar light  
      To never flutter crippled from heaven's harsh shut 
      Blues, buoyed amber, eternal, where bride  
185            and groom, 
      Skyey twins all tall among May's constellations, 
      Titter back at the spatter-smack of stars 
      Flaming wishes against God's dark, kids again 
      In the coaxing hour of sun and honey, kids again 
190   In the awake time, when time, once won hoverdom 
      Of love, I, an unready singer sing,  
      My smile all smiles slimly seamed in dawn's silver  
      Who takes as bud-beginning this thistle wish: 
      That no doom of flood will drown down 
195   Their happy miraculous town of rough, bright starts 
      Where every memory's a story, absent clamped  
                endings, 
      And evergreen sprays nail the cross doors wide 
      Open to Spring's blessed day, its fever of ferns, 
200   Prodigious boy and girl of the honoured hours 
      Before the widow's long black walk of hurt, 
      Or spark-eyed child's mewling through the roof, 
      Your joined joyed hands, spry fives, numb tumblers, 
      Work all love's agued locks aghast to lift 
205   Each crowbarred heart's cement hatch at last. 
      Here to the tying place, the trying place, the tryst- 
      Twisting lamp circle center, where startled guests 
      Gored with gifts arrive scurrying to hear 
      Each undead, annointed syllable, come! 
210   Ear the merry sojornings of two souls twirled  
      In wedded love, eat the feasts buried in their eyes 
      Who dance forever the loose measure of their lives 
      By shafted Cupid pinwheeled to their pulse, 
      Gifted girl and lucky lad, who curse not 
215   Their execution's unsteady stay on earth, 
      Who prick scrimshaw ivories of their imagined world 
      Or conga roaring Amazons to their flowing feet, 
      Going together their blood-bearing travels  
                down the tongue, 
220   Prayering every impossible grace like a thirst 
      Or swearing all paradise in a parched swallow, 
      So becoming is it when time-twining lovers 
      Forswear all long agony's terrored second 
      To, one witching minute in the weather, become. 
225   Come syllable and bell! Come harmony and drum! 
      All squeaking rivers come rushing to cry 
      Down to a ministering sea, its flak of salt 
      That washes away all sours, and delivers Love. 
      Somber before the deacon sober, fresh in his ash suit, 
230   (With all the names of friends mooing from creaking pews, 
      Clenching soggy knees to see, spooned the froth 
      Of agitated life at their Sunday service, once, 
      And buffooning faces at its bitterlessness) 
      The sugar man and sugared woman approach their lord, 
235   Who is Love, and none other, whose breath is caught 
      In kisses they give each other, whose combining 
      Tongue utters whatever their bodies have said, 
      Not blindly divine from the crimped mind down 
      But holyeyed up from the awkward fact of things, 
240   And wetly skyward fountains heaps of blessings. 
      Never could my hobbled praises jump to where 
      Their slowest heel pinned a hunching wing, 
      For they are heaven's couple, and leap lights---- 
      Marooning Einstein's murmured knowing, crowned 
245   Spendthrifts of forever's free eons, and of this 
      One day's redding rose, thorned before, but now, 
      In upright nakedness is: a blossom wholly blossom. 
      And here the stanzaed lovers stand and wave 
      Forever young against the grain of any decay, 
250   Sprung above by solacing lungs and gold loins, 
      Primed in the unenvying noontime to use 
      Their smallest wasted hours in largest ways, 
      Fondle doubts like aches out of their living skins, 
      And glow all loving-full all afternoon. 
255   And when all the lead-legged world can stamp for this 
      Magic miracle minuet its dancing due, 
      Subliming hates by carefree steps to some 
      Near perfect finger dance of tippling care, 
      Then forever's monotony will kneel to bliss 
260   And every sky-cast instant will fly us round to this: 
      Sugar lovers tilting on their cake to kiss. 
           4. The Dead Redeemed 
      HE 
      Is it my one love again, restored 
265   From storm and all the difficult stress 
      Midnight remembrance in darkness clasps upon us! 
      O see her, my slim-hipped silver lily 
      Returned to this life. Brief life! Watch 
      Her cold chaste lips warm from snow to rose--- 
270   Blush from this blood-color to incandescence! 
      In holy illumne, her breath, all softness, slips 
      From a heart of purer air thru molten lips. 
      Of all harsher striving now divest 
      The cloudy anvil in your breast; let melt 
275   The winter diadem cold ambition keeps. 
      Dear bare-headed child, lost in weeping spring, 
      Dance back to us! O the aweful glory 
      Of her eye has some dawning motion in it! 
      O eyes do not break, seeing miracles. 
280   O heart dare not out-pace your temper, 
      Made mad by this passion. I'll take 
      The sweet delerious heat of her 
      Now to life restored. She was Eve icicled over: 
      To this still manner unnaturally brought, 
285   By innocent want divided from the sunny vale 
      Whose oven Love warmed temperate paradise 
      Within her, and made her exile heaven 
      Untouched by the prohibiting sword of fire 
      The hot herald angel holds against us, 
290   Halting readmittance atop that palmy hill 
      Of green summer man first inhabits. 
      O how her eye now swivels to my sunken gaze! 
      By my sin, none have ever known 
      Such melting tenderness as I,  
295   Barely in my solid senses speaking,  
      Who witness this. She steps! And to thy embrace 
      Never again, dear, dear, will I falter. 
      O all the earth may wrap itself in death 
      And the unpeopled globe go snowballing 
300   Through infinite uncharitable space 
      Seeking out the shapeless source of darkness 
      In an abyss of time, I shall not care 
      Who holds my world in inches of my heart. 
      SHE 
305   Uncrowned and wetted by these servent's tears, 
      I take my life now and forever from 
      The love you give.  
      HE 
                           O then take, take it all! 
310   Of that joy I never shall lie desolate again. 
      SHE 
      I dart like a humble robin round your face, 
      Taking here and there from you, my earth, 
      Her everything. And who, nesting in the springtime 
315   Of your fond smiles, surrenders her sweet eggs 
      To a pouch of twigs woven of your beard. 
      There she sings in hope that future time uncracked 
      Will reveal itself as but present-time 
      Extended, your warm arms enchaning all 
320   With father-wings as eternal-gentle then 
      To all our laughing company as now to me. 
      For you see, no single life is hatched before you 
      But a pair of ressurrections descended, 
      Mother and child both. 
325   HE 
                              It is too much; 
      How strange the incidents of life do out-crow 
      The strongest visionaries, and make them drop 
      Their fantastic eyes from the castled air above 
330   To the panoply beneath. I don't know what to do! 
       SHE 
      Love, then, that love which loves whatever loves. 
      He that, when purple passion's overthrown, 
      Changes to day's clarity, a simple amplitude 
335   Of light grown clearer, and purified, 
      As eyes when thinking on their own dear love 
      Spark the purer for their thinking delight. 
      HE 
      Have I conjured thee out of the tender air? 
340   All eternity of sight takes shape 
      And solidity from your shape and shade. 
      Make some mortal gesture so I know my dreams  
      Do not cheat me. 
      SHE 
345                      I shall quit earth, quit life, 
      Quit everything that lacks a higher pleasure 
      Your unbounded blessedness is the answered prayer of, 
      (For what's noble in this life that its plucking off 
      Sharpens not the sweeter?) and with my own, 
350   My sacredest whispers worshipfully incline 
      To heaven's graces in your dwelling presence, 
      Giving evidence in divinest breaths  
      Of this poverty of words. 
      HE 
355                              No, wait, and wait, 
      Until I am myself a something etherial 
      And may climb to dreams that suffer nothing 
      But exalted visitations of your face, 
      Sleeping in paradise, and waking in heaven still.

      Behind which, a manual of technis,  
      derided and real, stood another, more real,  
      more derided, a moroser and a bluer moon  
      that knew nothing of the longing in which he dwelled.  
5     I too shall die, my velvet hymns lost in the lmmensity  
      my valerian ringing in deaf immensity

      If we cry the most exalted sentiments  
      In an age of exultation, who shall mock?  
      Those whose hearts are small, and spirits vanishing,  
      Make black assaults with blackened tongues  
5     Upon the crystal rock. No others have ever lent the least, 
      Well-wishing weight to such a thing, begun  
      In cloudy opposite to what our clearer thought has sung.  
      And if our orphic band of titans may yet release  
      The heavens unbelled from ruined man, then Peace!  
10    All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well,  
      Each man sighing out his sensual ghost like a bell!

      And Love, ever-renewed, and ever-fresh  
      like a self-fulfilling fountain never spent 
      it lofts forever its inverted bower 
      of consumeless crystal in a rainbow air  
5     as if to hold eternity were a simple wish  
      accomplished for the length the wish is lent  
      to our encompassing minds' sustaining power  
      leveraging hope with hope and fair with fair.  
      So like this surging fountain are you fair  
10    in unchanging changefulness exchanging  
      Your sweet qualities as wild water and subtler air  
      intermix with light, while in my attention hanging. 
       Of all the beautiful things in my suspending grasp, 
       None may stay, but you, who changes while I clasp.

      1 
      Is this hand stopped that commanded heavens: weep! 
      Does this angel's foot unstirred know love  
      For its enclosing stony bower, whose imagined flight it keeps 
5     Locked in laurel and bay wrapped upwards to thighs that moved--- 
      In gracing imitation lending what life keeps? 
      Past still stars in a rose bolt of thought they wove 
      Restless imaginings 
      Has this youth resigned the reigning fury of its powers 
10    That thoughtless as the cheating dream of sleep 
      Reveals in repose the still undissipated glory of its hour? 
      Does this temporal air unquiet lives possess  
      And ache to burn through, trace its faded pageant yet? 
            2 
15    This arcite find, in a world too plain for hating, 
      This disturbless gem among coruscate wrecks of majesty 
      That replenishes what autumn lessened with waiting 
      Give back, O lambent statue,--- what we gave and give: 
      Compeerless love that inhabits the spirit willing, exhaling 
20    Noble chansons imputed by baser breath, and live! 
      Nothing of that beauty in which you dwell, disdaining 
      The choking sneers of drugged humanity, as light 
      Disdains mud, through purer air illuminating 
      What is best and nearest Heaven as the mind finds right 
25    Interfusing loveliness with the manic grace of birth 
      Forever arriving, to resurrected senses' uplifted might 
      Blow the salt foam links of enduring hope and worth, 
      Drowning continents of dread, enchaining the earth! 
            3 
30    Become in waking what in slumbered stony limbs 
      Lies composed and stolen: vigilant, universal, true! 
      Let again the visionary eye white steeps climb 
      Arching and overarching brightnesses to unknown blues 
      That signal a universe at rest; O it sleeps 
35    To be quickened by whatever comes to quicken you! 
      My eyes in darkened contemplation close, or half-close, 
      Against the mellow dying sun's half-extinguished ray. 
      Those arms before me and that undimming eye turn liquid in the hush--- 
      All I see's a vision, the eye that shifts in hallucinated misery 
40    From its embalming grove, the countenance disentangled from its lush 
      Confinement; the lips that speak in light the imagined joy 
      May speak again, and now, as on humankind's first day. I see 
      A death reversed, the spirit kindled that was ash, burning free! 
            4 
45    O high and savage, wild spirit impel my voice 
      Through this dross of world and rank habitation, 
      Completing the impulse that visits without choice 
      The divining mind of man, a crystal exhalation 
      Pursuing all through the gross swamp of loss, and worse, 
50    Until the ages-inhibited palace in a word is built, a consummation. 
      Let not the invading dignity of God in awe 
      Or foisting ministries of superstition linger 
      To drop a pall on the inceptive brightness we would show: 
      The individual in his tensile case is cause and stir of this--- 
55    Of all the bellowing activity of world and whirl below, 
      A principle aloft on the rapt pinions of his flight, the disdaining gaze forgetting each abyss. 
      Never was the world into sonorous darkness cast, but yet 
      A heralding dew did canvas its midnight branches in a net. 
           5 
60    O pilot dawn that from chanting darkness vaults 
      Your clear tight line of song and light 
      Find a treble brightness in these words I choose and vaunt! 
      Oceans cold and amber-black thin to skies of light 
      And every denser, troubled atmosphere's dispersed, 
65    Changed into tolled notes of this brave saying's might! 
      Banished is the night, where frigid terror sweats its blasts 
      Into the mind's receiving dark, dispelled 
      The bitten hand, the frighted eye, the breath that draws its last: 
      All in one groan to courageous laughter fall. 
70    O light, o song, o life compelling swift and fast 
      This torrent of my soul, in joy consume it all! 
      Transform by my seed of light this globing black 
      To cones of prophecy and victory that give life back!

      She seemed an unbodied fragrance, flung 
      To salt our bound mortality with the chancing and free, wrung 
      Phosphorescent out of mundaner air, mulier 
      Inconsistencies, faking the autumnal tint. Wry jeweler! 
5     Moon-mother and mater, creator and queen, 
      Shed the coronaed gown you wear, the glowworm togs 
      And gems of deeper aspect that dazzle, as it seems, 
      In the gelid junctures of your aspic bones. 
      And then as we approached, in humble aspect drawn, 
10    To those chill towers hacked from the ice of dawn, 
      She slowed to come among us, as we were, simple 
      In her simple habit frothed of bone-- limp, unpearled. 
      Unbosomed we whined for the very concupiscent tit 
      And eyeless ached for the river of pity that we had had-- 
15    O death and mistress, o Azrael locust-winged and lacking 
      The twitching mead even our clumsy sisters blend 
      In the groin's obscure fortress, we arrow to you still!

      Why can't each diminished, moroser, I in Me  
      turn an instant hero of human liberty?  
      Where is the halt in hydrangeas that lash,  
      or in the coldness of the foyer at midsummer?  
5     The hero unfolds, like a completed page,  
      out of the red book of poems the poet has made;  
      scintillate lines of moonlight, or sultry writings of the sun  
      all are one, are one.  
      The aurora of midnight, exuding ichorous blacks,  
10    the poem of noon dripping saffron wax,  
      all, all are one, are one,  
      with the hero of tinsel who eyes up the sun.

      I 
      No power moves through the absent womb of world 
         Save the unchilding freedoms we exhume, 
         Rareeshow raptures or agonies of grace--- 
5     Initialed nights glorying boyhood's chrysalid had shed, 
      Choosing or willing the infinities that we use. 
      Anything is possible on the prayered moment if 
      We can ourselves conform to our intensest wish. 
                        II 
10    Sudden glory, like a chastizing star, comes down 
         In visitation of a beauty so profound 
         It charms from the chorus mass of men and hearts 
      Slim glimmers of awakened individual; like a spark 
      Sighing half-alive, and into weedy rushes blown 
15    That shift disconsolate in brutish dreams beneath the swell 
      Of vaulting summer skies, hugely serene, 
      That wait in their million fires, half-alone, 
      For the solitary touch to shatter them, and fall. 
                        III 
20    When nature's blossoming bower hovers over-- 
         Impelling love of kind and kind for kindred 
         Into the roving mind lost dew-dazzled in the grass 
      Where leaf soft leans on leaf while faded hours pass 
      Thoughtless in the light weaving blades tie rainbows of, 
25    All confusions of the thousand rivers of thought we wove 
      Return to the solitary glory of their mountain cone above. 
                       IV 
      Does the mutable rose regret the sorrow 
         That seeded its mystery forth, 
30       When some previous forethought 'tomorrow' 
      Spoken by argent dreams into the midnight ear did late 
      Blind its parents to their unhappy state? 
      What momentary interplay of unquitting faith 
      Can ever give to us the tenth we pledge to it? 
35    Unbeholden, proud, irreducible and true: ourselves. 
      Out of ecstasy engendered can never come hate. 
                         V 
      But death is no soft pursuer, and crimson without relent 
         Stalks the lambent arteries of the brain 
40       Shifting an unlifted sword of terrifying flame, 
      Crowned with the antlered ratoon barbs of blood. 
      To survive past his infliction would vitiate our hour 
      Or fold what we are into what will be, or should. 
      We are winning princes of ever-nascent hue 
45    Until dread and expectation dethrone our power. 
                        VI 
      The individual and his hissing spit of flame 
         Remain an inviolable fire, never shamed 
         By that which rises outlandish from the crux 
50    Of this safe diminishment and purgatorial flux 
      Of knowing and unknowing we purblind endure, 
      Then clamor to regain, aping ignorance's blessing word, 
      Crying out upon the rock: I do not know, not what, 
            not why! 
55                      VII 
      Beauty dissipates like the morning star, moving on 
         To an unknown noon we never can remake; 
         O artisan of ecstasies, defy 
      With inmost grace my tembril heart's white-speaking argosy 
60    That foretells disasters in a triumph never crowned, 
      Or weak in the dividing chine of sable fields 
      Thinks eyes that see her dying will never see her healed. 
                         VIII 
      Beauty brushes up the brigand love in me, 
65       Feels severe heavens burn 
         Banished in a blink of pain; 
      O summer dove, gone too often, so lightly afraid 
      Of my intruding face, thrust too high again...! 
      What should sustain this troubled ecstasy I feel 
70    Vanished breathless into those misty rocks 
      Swept with ominous shadows malformed by thought, 
      Chambering a dark feeling I cannot bear to see? 
                       IX 
      All life is a snaky finger pulling out a braid! 
75       Still I feel the opposite 
         Crowd into my aching thought 
      Until every true light in darkness takes some part, 
      And a looming mood is descending to obscure 
      The innocent auguries of ever-sought, that risp 
80    The haloed meadow in a world gone sour, eclipsing 
      Each dew-weighted blossom with some soft blot.

      Visionary excess uprose in the stolen tides 
      Crystalline, perduring, vetted in the instant 
      Golden hymns pouring requisite challenge bled 
      Telling spoken thunders of obliterate night, discasing 
5     Napalm essences confined respiring within. 
      Amontillado longing has layered in dote snow 
      This solitude's long cacodemon alone, 
      So long alone! coffined is the resplendent dare 
      Resolving dawn had etched heroic in infant light, 
10    Holy illume robing hope's winking oval. 
      Singletree astra vent the penetrate sigh 
      In crescent exhilarations unbounding might 
      And overarch in reck disaster's devoutest crash, 
      Asymptote stars purloining their spirit's ash 
15    To deadlight infinities lapsing black 
      Witholding the shocked taste of vestral tongues 
      Amending heaven in rapturous recurr. 
      Act again the vibrant chroma of a soul 
      Rendered restless vexillum in forever frission 
20    Touching eternity as you touch a tear! 
      Availing tenderness, who propels the afferent aubaude 
      Sympathetic skies flicker dark to listen on 
      And dawn-starred morning's stir lessened to quiescence is 
      Chime of me what your lustrous substance says, 
25    A reborn sounding out what nature offers hollow--- 
      The bell-heart victory whipping blazing wings! 
      Consuming the specter revelation suspiring still 
      Hidden in sacred songs' reforming breath 
      Hand-made to dissipate at the spirit's reveille--- 
30    The spiring call trafficking miracle from will, 
      O oblate rose enfolding the casual fires 
      That I tender, scansorial scapegrace 
      Deigning imagination's dream of love to earth, 
      Floating bridal above the violet sacgreal flood 
35    I, mimic bittern eclipsing space, become 
      A noble spirit beheld in the overflowing air 
      Time's soilent chanson never can erase. 
      Vibrato folly windlassed to a heart 
      Too old for aching, newborn in blisses! 
40    Better raving death's whitened pestilence inhale 
      Fretted with the russet dew of morn, than be 
      Of all this molting richness reft. 
      Vitiate existence sheds its rude root 
      Commanding mink appellations of divinity 
45    To squander undying on the breath of earth, 
      Scintillate acres condensed in the 
      Brightened loop of a man's brave saying--- 
      Causeless caduceus fires risible ever 
      In the roadhouse roar of torrid exhalations. 
50    Chase perron the persiflage ecstacy 
      From the bone fortitude billowing birth 
      Into the absent garden, willowy terrae, 
      Thronged among corolla weeps of lilies 
      And foxgloves cascadent as the waterfall 
55    Where restful banks of slant rhododendrons shade 
      Hydra eyes of opium, corposant disperse, 
      Inherit coronas auroraed from the misted moon,  
      In cirrous lacramata uncurl each timid lid 
      Chastizing disaster in the espousing skin 
60    While rosetted haloes about the argent body break 
      Roulade glories gospelling the spine until 
      Like sultry angels hastening paradise casts down 
      We burst cinquefoil in the cispidane kingdom 
      Rivering of ourselves the immaculate substance, 
65    Grace-abiding in the tinct rove of memory. 
      Devouring gilt whitens in the rimed eye, 
      A devotional hauteur that cannot avoid 
      Sharpened joys siliquose breaths elude, 
      Immersing salt ninevahs-- rapt heavens 
70    Blowing from our mouths! Sidereal child 
      Withy-spirited in the wristing beam 
      Withstand alive the thunderpeal's throatlatch 
      Remaining recherche in the light you weave. 
      Torch-lit liberty laughs in the willing flaunt 
75    Of glistered death, sundering pulpit--- 
      Elixive veins inventing the baptismal wells 
      Sunning solitude pulses glowpoint to look upon 
      As if tissued insistences of a gossamer world 
      Sinistral failed, twisting the penchant veil 
80    That clouds our doings to pinched nothingness. 
      Pursue the fled ice steps of what 
      Has never left, inveterate stitch staith, 
      Lipping the vireo's cordial incantations, 
      Never stale, deep in intricate night's exult, 
85    Upwelling the radiant lashes once again, 
      Stammel descantings rosined choicest coral 
      Never breaching the sacred tympan must, and be 
      What shadows of summer skies in hymned immensity 
      Half guess the golden purpose of the inspiring sun; 
90    Become what the staring eagle cannot see 
      Although he stare revolving fires to the whitecomb sea 
      Or sphinxlike out-wait time's inseamed mystery.

      The storm's unushered, prophetic dark, 
      And livid wind welled violet between 
      Scarlet uncertain oaks, blueveined in flashes,--- 
      Upended elements pried from the purpose 
5     Dull day proposes, these elements 
      Rhapsodize to obey your compelling grace 
      As I, who move unshielded among them, 
      Am spun to molten love by the owned harmonious noise 
      Sending white tendrils into stone gated ears 
10    Until melodious waves crest and besieging enter 
      To touch a magenta core, unsealed: 
      So touched, so tortured.

      We had rowed half-way over, 
      Half out of breath, half-way to death; 
      His hand upon the oar grew stronger, 
      Every effort adding what should be less. 
5     And in the heralding storm I saw a clearing: 
      Never had what was far panted nearer; 
      Invisible clouds in angel's light brought tears in; 
      Resolved, my heart awoke: I could not fear her. 
      "All things to all things impart some measure; 
10    Death's leaden touch sinks breath." 
      "Coriolis longings of my love have abdicated leisure! 
      I rise forever exhaling light and pleasure!"

      Penitent skies fall to her uplifted face 
      Spurning vermilion reels of obsequy 
      Still night had enchanted with simpering shades 
      Born to fawn at whatever her coral soul imposed. 
5     Naked girl of insistences 
      Dismiss this churn of universe 
      With a backpaddle of that turnless hand 
      Spun starlight spins to expire upon! 
      Dawn's jade twirl cannot climb to kiss 
10    The disastrous greens of her envisioned eyes; 
      Wrapped with a bandage of incendiary tongue, 
      I cannot unbraid this claiming fire within me 
      That spikes these whipping words.

      The world created in an eye of fire 
      Forever joyous, forever renewed! 
      Touch but in yourself one divine desire 
      And live: forever joyous, forever renewed! 
5     Flowers tumble into wreaths, and urns 
      Though clotted with rank weeds and tears 
      The steady heart may overturn 
      Spilling Love from dust, rescinding years! 
      Prophecies are sweetest in their day, 
10    Manifesting first the heart that speaks them; 
      Above dull Empire's crumbling sway 
      Whisper wanted loves their sweet conclusions. 
      Here we touch who had brief parting, 
      Ariel lives kissing bliss immortal, 
15    Straying into light falling from us 
      As pulsant breaths from loved lips 
      May fall blessed and blessing best. 
      The world created in an eye of fire 
      Forever joyous, forever renewed! 
20    Touch but in yourself one divine desire 
      And live: forever joyous, forever renewed!

      The renegade pearl of her conscience unconsumed 
      Writhes repentless in the purl of shifting fires; 
      I taste her infant breath-- like asphodels 
      Enduring rain, scenting perduring nothing risible rose! 
5     Her hesitant spirit wakes the finitudes we crave, 
      Suspect eyes reinventing the evening's spent char, 
      Giving night the one, acetylene touch 
      While she trembles alone in her vintage heaven of wait. 
      The light in her chaste fingers undoing rue 
10    From all this blessing conspire lifts the sacral hue; 
      Spilling love unbelievable from her telltale eye, 
      They caress the everliving in eternal charge.

      FIRST VOICE 
      Man's choosing fate, unwinding ever, 
      Moves through destinies unbidden 
      As greeting Spring to touching Summer blows, 
5     Enhancing the heat of Life's passing fever. 
      Once touched and forever unbarren, 
      The virgin spirit in solitary procession goes; 
      Like a bee alighting on some trembling lip, 
      Life comes aching to quicken with a kiss 
10    As, year to year, and summer though summer slips, 
      Till rouging winter wakes to kill us with its hiss. 
      SECOND VOICE 
      What, though they fall to Hell, have not 
      Their dying eyes seen sweet Heaven weeping? 
15    And although their day must lapse from less to less 
      As leaves give way to leaves gone brown, 
      They resigned not the green while it was 
      Raging in their veins, nor the tears that sparked 
      Those vertiginious and fresh cheeks of youth. 
20    And although each night must blow winter's hollow horn, 
      Did not the spring dew burn when it was morn?

      Somehow this minute's perrenial gift 
           Twirled lost between delivery and drift. 
      Somehow life's crimson bower 
      Witheld the summer's dauntless power 
5     To sing and strain unsullied 
      Note to note in holy love allied. 
      "O jeweled ruling impulse of this life, 
      Sacred presence in scorning emerald repose 
      Serrating heavens in rosaries of light, 
10    Out of one controlling heart explode 
      Carillions of blissing affection, pure moves 
      Of this tonsured heart's obeying resolves 
      A tameless faithing conscience imposes, 
      Out of my moment's soulless rock exhaling roses!"

      A spell of adoring April fell on him 
      Mazed with the dark freshness of the evening light 
      While the filling oak made its ghostly silhouette alone 
      Swooning with midnight above a starry ground 
5     Of crocus buds, until, enlivened by the haunting moon, 
      His every trembling vein flushed bright the skin 
      And he lay in tumbling sleep, reddened by the night. 
      Tumultuous dreams that in his waking soul 
      Were long kept burdened by the disdain of day 
10    Leapt like tigers at the approach of night 
      And sped to his dazed consciousness again, 
      Seeking their rapturous release. 
      Wild images and untamed thoughts first kept 
      The night with him, unveiling strangeness 
15    In their fantastic change from mundaner memory, 
      Flashing matches into torrents of reigning fire 
      Or enduing the noon passage of a bird into the sun 
      To flame the bewildered horizon with phoenixes; 
      Interfusing chance with diviner substances 
20    He found a realer fate in accidents 
      That happened to him. Then a kneeling girl 
      Appeared, with no rose penumbra or mystic light, 
      Touching his sleeping ear. He seemed to wake 
      And stretched half-lifted to her moving lips, 
25    For even as he was stirred and stricken 
      By the dawning beauty her aspect imposed, 
      She lent his hearing wreckless unerring visions 
      She had, in some angel's hibernation, composed: 
      "Respire as spirits of former time-- 
30    Tempering justice in tranquillity, inventing 
      Themes for espousing night to improvise on 
      In angel's meditation of unabating soul; ignite! 
      Claim the perilous grace of divinest liberty! 
      Thy soul, in blood profound, imbues splendor 
35    In afferent traceries of nurturent veins, 
      Enthralling thrown infinities here forever, 
      Where one scarlet touch inscribes eternities 
      Against a face chastely serene, now lit 
      With unrepentant love in spun regard 
40    Evadeless ecstasies endow and bless." 
      She bent, pursuing some darker aching part 
      Of her enchanting story, and further still pursued 
      The unwinding of her vision in his streaming eyes 
      Until, her inwept paradise unburdened, 
45    They kissed, exchanging subtle breaths. 
      He bent upwards against her, as when joy 
      Overtakes some dread state in exultation 
      Transmuting the possessed. And then, as swift 
      As lightning leaves the vacant sky to shake 
50    Unlighted with sorrowing thunder, she fled 
      And left no footprint on the swelling seam 
      Of his vacant brain, astonished as the skies. 
      Nothing in the darkness answered the compelling cries 
      Torn from his mouth; his eyes in wretchedness shone. 
55    He pored across the landscape, holding fast 
      To any fainting detail imagination might 
      Misconstrue as hers. He closed his eyes, and there! 
      Her voice pursued him into the unlidded dark, 
      Calm as the sovereign thoughts she chanted of. 
60    Many hours he passed in awed silence thus, 
      Or perhaps half speaking as he heard, 
      Listening to the everliving lays of heaven 
      Kindle once again with a contented smile. 
      "The poet's lips, straining the unbelieving air, 
65    Disclose a gasp, and, murmuring astonishment, 
      Speak what his own unlived dreams have given him."

      Spirits out of remoter time awake, conclude 
      This unsteady enterprise I undertake, bestirred 
      To seek by doing your old victory's certitude. 
      All action waits unread in the breviary 
5     Conscience scribes on the germinating page of brain, 
      Turned and unturned by each half hour on the clock--- 
      Unwound once too often, and then named death. 
      What is in the poet's drink to make him sigh, 
      Or naked beauty purling at his tender feet 
10    To flood his delta spirit to his muddy sense? 
      All true doing does its mirrored loop uncoil 
      Aiming in splendor to uncurl forever 
      Until red ministries of wishes that chafe 
      Angelic ears come spattering back at earth 
15    In drum-torrents of sweet-willed rain 
      Or shatter damned, and eat the uttering voice 
      That challenged their cold potentiality 
      With one warm breath, or lucid exhalation 
      Unbraiding in the air. Vital arbiter! 
20    That in the limpid human summons diamonds up. 
      I, a loblolly boy adrift alone address you 
      Shadowed sages pulled from the umbraed pall 
      Of so many deaths, hurrying to carry fire 
      In untried hands that take their anxious brand 
25    As easy as snow. Cannot the unearned vow 
      I voice at night go unerring also? 
      All raving arrows of a vinegared heart! 
      Cannot this sovereign whisper lipped by a sleeping head 
      Suffice the perilous chalice of gathered hands 
30    An over-hasty life has swept together? 
      Still there is a greater unabating chance 
      In any decrepit model of your flagging past 
      Than the thousand inanities dreaming out 
      Today's false-misted, haze-struck 'tomorrow'; 
35    I hear the taxing outcry of your valorous start 
      And spread my stretching soul to its farthest part-- 
      Which was a heavy mercury in crucible valleys rolled-- 
      And change every flowing form to a unit of that grace 
      That shrieks ecstatic stasis vacant heavens laced.

      Poets of the visionary trade, why sing a day 
      To touch those hearts the people threw away? 
      Why rummage in the common ditch 
      Where workmen cast their broken lot, 
5     Deploring the trouble, and cursing the task, 
      Day and day, to turn with a soured boot 
      Their offended hearts where luck abandoned them? 
      Poets, throw your sodden hearts away! 
      Wearily came my heart to the world's heart 
10    Sighing alive from a time my tired soul forgot. 
      Oh, Poets, throw your sodden hearts away.

      My friend had walked her ways of life: 
      My friend came to me sighing: 
      "O take what I've brought out of this life, 
      A little yellow rose." 
5     My friend at night grew troubled with life, 
      And troubled my heart with sighing: 
      "O take what I've brought out of this life, 
      A little yellow rose." 
      She came at midnight, and at midnight stayed, 
10    Our eyes never done with sighing. 
      In her dropping hand she held and gave 
      A little yellow rose. 
      Oh take what I've brought out of this life, 
      A little yellow rose

      All sleeping nature in morpheant calm 
      From your darling breath takes contagion 
      And teaches the sacred ache looming in your smile,-- 
      Infinite fragment of all divine principle,-- 
5     To rhododendrons balled against unsifted snow 
      And, abrupt pupil, injects January's fricatives 
      With August's unadulterated ululations. 
      You demand the encrypting eye espouse 
      Arrant whims of celluloid fire-- 
10    Prised from the uncomprehending tilt 
      Of all these elemental longings I pursue, 
      Arced within our finer breast. Or did. 
      How in the torn winds resuscitate 
      This abandoned grace? 
15    Her spirit lifts a spiral fire 
      Whose vivid wish may once consent to touch 
      Enduing mists with acerose light. 
      Still is it her-- in this trenchant whirl gone blue, 
      Alive in this misprision that you chase, 
20    Spinning virulent coils grasping  
      After this abiding prayer?

      "Itinerant glory that on the lancing heart 
      Made play, as water in the wine of light 
      Radiates itself by the light it allows to pass; 
      Doesn't every glory have laughing for a start?" 
5     "Stars alive in the heaven of night 
      Are but the laughter eyes see first and last." 
      "And so the crown that crests your autumn heart 
      Amplifies blood-water's laughing for its light 
      And radiates but what heart holds first and last."

      And you shall pay, shall pay, 
         with "the rock, the vulture, and the chain." 
      Oh my fragile immortality! 
         gifted at the price of eternal pain. 
5     Life's secret, and death's mystery, 
         both despise my freedom's synergy; 
      A haughty god despising fathers 
         conceived in a moment's squalor.