au fond de l'allée

on fera un chant de l'été

chants royal

ganz leise
siebzehn sonetten im petrarkischen stil
für mich und dich

I: tendrils
shyly our hands grow fingers to entwine
within each other in a furious dream
that in perhaps our creeping to the seam
of palmistry like seeds we sow in line
half dread to hope that with a slow resign
the twentyfold relief of touch redeem
a ginger nervousness by which to seem
like chance and maybe if to when consign –
and if this crop of hands holds greater fruit
within our grasp, let it be so that in
some when by time caressèd, we may feel
the coy rotation of some deepening root;
the space between our fingers is too thin
to keep our hands apart. so quietly steal

II: seasons
perhaps if; and by what whose so denies
the everything from which a flower springs
unbid into the consciousness of things,
and if perhaps the maybe asks all whys
to summer breezing warmth with flower lies;
so forth believes that where, who sweetly brings
long patience to a tender missing’s ring
will once surrender when. to catalyse
an autumn’s worth of laughter kiss the sky
whose million eyes in shining brood of peace
are always slyly watching here and there
and slowly learn to if perhaps then sigh
again if place were better there the tease
would winter not the great white everywhere

III: lessons
to learn is how to forget to forget
and take a newer step into a past
that lies instead ahead, not better last,
to breathe as well again in stories yet
untold: if history iterates then let
time take a hold on all and tie them fast
to sweep away the memories of dust
such recollection possibly could unset –
to learn to forget is to remember how
the moments gone long by will come again,
and inescapable the loops of long always
will pierce these minds, and then forever bow
to each and every twinge of cold refrain
remembering to forget a memory’s trace.

IV: regard
Your silent gaze when you are near to me
I think is like the moon, whose dreamy light
is newly fallen rain upon my sight;
but sometimes it is cold, and then I see
something like frost upon the barren tree
whose leaves, deserting butterflies in flight,
are not yet touched upon the ground in spite
of all the time this winter longs to be –
and so within your gaze I shall have drowned:
in sleet or snow I lose myself. Perhaps
when back into your warmth I am received
the moon will shine again upon the ground
of my eyes; till then my endless sinking saps
the dreams I, dreaming, have conceived.

V: icarus
So secretly love steals to us: behold,
how like the spring warming the winter ice
you melted me, and how in turn your eyes
alight with flame and laughter when we fold
our hands together. Love me, then, be bold
and carefree; fly with me into the skies
where each new day is another sure surprise
and watch the seasons pass or earth unfold…
Yet also hold me tight, for always am
I fearing that the sun will melt our wings
and that we fall – if this should come to pass,
hold on to me, in passion to condemn
our hearts into each other’s everything –
now look: so secretly love steals to us.

VI: morphosis
this is a moment that we set apart
from others – what is said is said and so
it is – the memory will stay, although
details will change – within each tiny part
the edges fade, and even if the heart
remains, the crystal of a thought will grow –
thus we embrace – the neverending flow
of time around us freezes – so to start
remembering a past that reaches out
so feebly to our minds, abandon time
and let a rising moon separate our breath –
forget the shifting sanity of doubt –
within the flood of such a tender crime
we seem to touch the kind contour of death

VII: extempore
we are but improvisations of (think
how much is chance: if everything and word
were one, or poetry a flapping bird)
unreasoning, a melancholy sink
in which a charybdis sweeps (how in drink
with secrets to forever stay unheard
ebriation against the night preferred)
all sign of calm within its hissing brink.
if improvising, cue the mind to stop
its thinking; feel the way time passes by
(while only using the heart) and then (again)
to feel the tugs of nervousness on top
of unpredictable emotions. try
to feel my heart. follow its beating pain.

VIII: embers
The candle burns: look how it flickers, light
in jumping all around the room, its steps
like music of an ancient era. Hear the claps
of swaying flame within whose heated flight
lies seeds of shadows shrunken black from white
walls dodging chiaroscuro. A smoky lapse
and wax flows, charting melting maps
descending from the wick’s bright height.
Yet such a light is sacrifice refined:
made to become entirely flame, a tongue
suicidal in its immolation. Burn,
then, safe in knowing that all ends in kind.
The flame flits waving at the smoke so hung
within the air. The shadows hide in turn.

IX: asymptote
this is the height of yearning: how the moon
would sooner rise to catch the sun, or rain
to tend to higher skies, the pure terrain
of which is never near – then ever soon
a coming close frustrating night and noon
for even when such time and space are here
they are too close for time, too far to hear
the springtime showers bathing summer June;
this is the height of yearning, that hummingbirds
can never reach alone to higher fruit,
nor tendrilled melons be as stars – instead
eternity as bound upon the ground has words
to feed the thirst of each slow reaching root
and tie two hearts with some intangible thread.

X: idiolect
the sheer immediate syntax of a speech
such far cry from the vowels serpentine
which flowing through a tongue may sooner glean
a glimpse of the infinite Grammar which
is threaded through all being – so to reach
the higher language stubbornly unseen
in noun adjective particle has been
that even nature never deigns to teach –
if i am poetry you are the pen:
please write me well and lucid like the birds
of Paradise that fly eternally;
perhaps if maybe shall then somehow can
then you and i will become less like words
and more like unrelenting verbs To Be.

XI: tapestry
the watercolour passage spreads its canvas wide
and stretches out upon the summer air –
each cotton cloud the mark of brushes where
the sky is blank and bristles with the stride
of sunlight, and the creatures that abide
by flowing stream or shady grove can spare
the colours of a glorious morning, there
a shepherd with his pastured flock beside…
relentless laxing of a mood to calm,
the stubborn mists of hues commingle, stain,
diffuse into each other as the land
onto the picture bleeds. and so, a balm
to soothe a tired eye, and cheer again
the tired master of a worked and weary hand.

XII: opposition
if heart to heart a battle does in fact
begin, be quickly less to tie unknot
for what is kind in same and name in not
annihilates; whereas like cataphract
and janissary warring, stop, inspect
the motive’s tender strategy where thought
is only less infinite than the spot
of desert where sky and earth both intersect:
what’s same in species may unnamed, disdain,
and pulses so confused may break the threat
of harmony; if so, leave it be cut,
for carelessly can too much heed constrain
a true surrender. take a deep breath. let
the fighting quickly end. if then, so what?

XIII: psyche
her diaries read like clocks slowly unwound:
delirium tugging bit by bit into
the far beyond confusion – what is true
and which is not unravelled to confound;
across the months a sanity unbound
is left to roam among the worlds and through
her body leave its scattered paths anew,
the way an ivy creeps along the ground –
but hear her speak. everything she says
is strong and sure, a sheer reserve behind
the myriad tortures of her thinking. ask
a question, and the books of all her days
will scream her lives throughout her tattered mind,
and yet her face is steady as a mask.

XIV: quiescence
When I’m with you I ask the world to speak
for me, because the speed the winds can blow
is faster than my speech, and what I know
much less than sunlight at its daily peak.
I ask the river and the gurgling creek
to be my flood of thoughts, and I too owe
the earth my thanks to hold your feet below,
and how the stars within your eyes may seek
your sighs. When you’re with me my words run dry,
never enough and far too weak to say
the desperate prayer of my affection. And
regardless of my muted tongue, you try
to make our silence luminous, the way
you put your arm in mine, and take my hand.

XV: elements
should one fine day with what an autumn’s breeze
upon the cooling air can continue,
my dreams would fly upon the winds to you
and thinking, cause the leaves of trees to sneeze
their red and gold, inflaming summer’s peace
with hints of time to come, as if their hue
of fire could chase the sun, causing a new
recall of burning passion – and I miss
you as the river always strains to reach
the ocean’s great wide compass; take me by
the turbulent offence of rapid flow,
and I will never mind if death should teach
solemnity within the grave I lie
if you would be the last great love I know.

XVI: coldsnap
the endless winter of insanity
within the blossoming of icy streams
has sheer command of sleep, and waking dreams
can turn the cries of nascent infancy;
in wintering such season dazedly
contained by white and snow and frosted seam,
run out all naked that the raw chills seem
to have no power over such carelessly
uncautioned daring: learn to be the same
as falling snow, as the icicles that drape
themselves down from the roofs, and only then
can winter lose its grasp upon its name
when all is scattered by a mind whose shape
ais nothingness and not a dot more than

XVII: refrain
my songs are yours as such a language is
the only gift within my self to give,
and if the melody is sweet reprieve
then all I wish is nothing left to miss;
my songs are yours: I am too weak to kiss
these words with loving. take them – sooner leave
or helplessness will steal me, and I grieve
for they are yours and sadly only these;
my songs are yours just as I am, and if
with age they should transform my meagre voice
into a dumbness threaded through with wrong,
they will be always yours. will you believe,
and help me sing again? the eternal poise
upon my lips, still flowing with your song?

trésors:sequence, sonnet

jeudi, 23e-octobre-2008 07:00 pm - seventeen waltzes

for sherm

i. (the perfume)
the perfume of the music purifies
the ballroom air. she takes his proffered hand;
and in the glowing dance ensuing, eyes

are locked upon them. seated people stand
to get a better look. the buzzing tone
of strings pulsating and the fairly grand

character of the dance are left alone.
she knows their steps are sacred and the light
they make immortal. he, too, knows they shone:

within their crystal waltz they set alight
a fire blazing cold as arctic ice.
they are the dance. her breath, like his, so white.

ii. (three seasons)
there comes a time in which a flower dies.
within each autumn, when the leaves decide
their deaths will feed the tree anew – a price

never too large – their willing suicide
in red and gold of fire burns. their fall
an autumn of the self, as if trees cried

their bloods into the ground to flower more,
again, another year apart. but he,
in love, denies the year; and evermore

for him the year’s four seasons will be three,
because the winter, with his sadness, lies
in the grave. always, his happiness will be…

iii. (so he believes)
so he believes. the music blooms beneath
the silent sleep of night, a nervous young
thing shivering, shining in the moonbeams’ wreath,

a melody in waiting, to be sung;
and pair by pair the feet that fly upon
the lilting, triple rhythms will be hung

in frames, as frozen moments, pictures torn
between the keeping of those precious times
and life that brims into the too-forlorn

maps dance steps are. and buried in the rhymes
of a steady beat: the words the wind will breathe
into the ring of a girl’s light-hearted chimes.

iv. (a flutter)
there is a flutter in her heart: she feels
the first soft pulsings of a strange recall
that thrums through her and sweetly fills

her every bone with doubt. her musings fall
like snow upon her mind, spreading a calm
upon her actions. quietly she pours

a cup of tea, and in its soothing balm
she sinks, her heart yet floating on the air
through which a shiver trips along her arm,

pausing her thoughts. and as she ties her hair
her spirits are set free, over the fields
and forests and the great wide everywhere.

v. (the flower)
the flower hides her shy visage: the sun,
too bright for her, has singed her with his rays,
and now she droops her head, no longer one

so bold to catch his heart within her face;
he searches still for her, scouring the land
throughout the day while trees and grasses laze.

she wants to feel again the waters wend
throughout her veins without his heated glow
so strangely pulling up her heart’s consent:

instead of wanting water she did grow
to thirst for him – but now she keeps her wants
buried beneath her roots, deep down below.

vi. (the ship)
the ship sets sail. it seeks out lands anew,
the way a breeze disturbs a leafless tree,
and swaying on the waves it bids adieu

to a homeland, as the wind rebelling free
from fetters laid in stiller air. and just
as winds are free to scour the earth, the quay

does naught to tame the ship. the slightest gust
would be excuse enough to sail, and for
the lightest breath the wind takes forth, as must

the ephemeral; and the soft encore
of breaking surf upon the sands are true
in always yearning, ceaseless, ever more.

vii. (tastes)
naïvely bitter in the breath of morn
the trees sway slowly in the wind. the blue
spreads slowly, eating at the black, the dawn

encroaching on the sourness of true
delight hiding in wait for sunrise; hear
the earth’s appeal for wings – once, when it flew

through heavens scattered with the gods’ own tears,
the salty streams through which still flow the seeds
of now: and now, as rooted as the fears

from which it grew, the world’s deep river bleeds
a sweetly tingling wine in which is born
the insane love to satisfy our needs.

viii. (he laughs)
he laughs, and thus the world turns green: the blooms
regain their sprightliness and breathe the scent
like gods that watch their many weaving looms,

the warp and weft of which, in weaving, bent
around the infinite, and it was bound:
he laughs, and thus the world turns green: the scant

tempestuous grace that greets the time unwound
throws shadows through the years: and when the world
divides, cementing life and like, around

the steep: delicacy that slowly twirled
the laughter in the green of him has rooms
to spare for flowering scarcities unfurled

ix. (the path of spring)
unfolding is the path of spring, a song
laid gently at a maiden’s feet to hold
her in her stride, and (fancy) she along

with time in passing (by a breeze so bold
remaking) then begins her daily rites,
in earnest spreading warmth into the cold

(and slightly damp from winter) fireflights
so coyly peeking out (a pretty thing)
among the flowers that decorate her sights

and there is harmony within the ring
of fairy stools (not so un)like the throng
who dance (unfolding) in the path of spring

x. (reminiscence)
look: in the slowly turning, steady-beat
reflection of a time long past, one may
realise a thing or two, as if the heat

those dances held would seep into – and stay
within – the mysteries of the heart; a style
of calm and passion, yearning to betray

the pulsing blood within the little while
these hands are fused into a fist and held
so tightly in each other – like the smile

she secretly allows herself. compelled
to move, the music binds him – and their feet
retrace with care an age long since dispelled.

xi. (they dance)
they dance with grace; they dance with fire. they hold
each other cautiously and then they fly
while holding on with all they can. the cold

of midnight wind bestirs the couple. by
and by they warm up to each other’s step;
the world is trying hard to fade, its why

and how and what all answered by the trap
laid slyly by the dancing. three by three
they lilt in circles, drawing on the map

that once before was black. curiosity
and a burning waltz beckon them: it is told
they dance with time; they dance eternally.

xii. (a hand)
a hand slowly unfolds, revealing deep-
set crevices; a fist evaporates,
and through the parting fingers seeps

a nascent thought, a palmistry too late
to shade the eggshell of the breaking hand.
a bud slowly unfurls, in yearning state

another hand too slow to comprehend
the way a flower sparkling is; resigned,
it blooms a shy repentant rose, the strand

of green towards its roots a string to wind
the perfume of its core into a grip
on minds, as how a soft hand leads the blind.

xiii. (the flood)
he feels a flood of words impending: so
he runs toward the nearest desk, perhaps
to get a piece of paper, a ready flow

of ink beside the quill. as thunder claps
so does he set a torrent flurrying through
the vowels and consonants in collapse;

it seems the wind is meant to misconstrue
his inspiration – papers fly just when
all meaning hits, and he is left to rue

the words escaping from his waiting pen.
the waters, killing, wash his way, although
they spare a million other willing men.

xiv. (a jealous moon)
this is despair: a waning dance throughout
a night whose moon gleams cold. the windowpane
allows a greenly-tinted light. without

the melodies the dance is static, lain
over the floor like plants that never grow.
but there will always be a pair in pain

and there is hope: they never want to slow
or stop, and dance they will, for music is
no complement to her as him; below

their hearts their bodies twine in courtship’s bliss,
so sweetened by a jealous moon. the cloud
which hides the light has made her truly his.

xv. (the candle-sun)
they have the sun caressing them: do close
the window. now the light is trapped within,
be careful; shape it neatly in a rose

and place it on a candle wick. and in
its burning feel its worth; now in the night
the darkness stays outside, unseen,

invisible in waiting. and the light
swaying so brightly on the candle-wick
beckons to them, stretching and lazing tight

against each other. this is no magic trick:
the windows must be closed; if moonshine knows,
the sun escapes. for now it dances on the stick.

xvi. (a time for tears)
there will be time for tears: and so she weeps,
the sadness like a spring flood in her eyes
whose glacial flows melt slowly on her lips;

in summer as the sunlight gladly flies
above her, she is stung, reminded of
a happier time when days were free of sighs

and nights would pass, the way an autumn cough
would make the leaves turn frail, and twirl
into her dreams where time slowly dissolved…

but now her heart is cold; the cruel unfurl
of winter holds her tight, and sadness keeps
her crystallised into a mournful pearl.

xvii. (the fire (finale))
their dancing spreads like fire throughout the night
and makes the stars shine brighter. watch their turns
and twirls over the land, while holding tight

onto each other – as a candle burns
to die, evaporating in its flame,
they give up everything they have: their yearns,

their wishes. in the blaze they are the same –
two people still – and they are different, one
in self and time. and as the world grows tame

they are the wild: they are the two who want
the heavens live in them and make them bright,
their dance as blinding to the eye as the sun.

trésors:sequence, terza rima

lundi, 24e-décembre-2007 09:51 am - Theme and Variations

Theme

I dream my blasphemies. Across the sky

I write these dreams: dreams they may be, but flight

Will make them true. Illumined in that light

Do I dare dream? What stills, what moves my eye?

Some nights I dream that dreams become this I,

And I am spread by dreams to dim and bright.

In dreaming, then, I lay my every right—

And when the morning comes, these dreams will die.

When I so dream, do I awake to live?

My questions never cease: a dream is just

A dream, they say—and wisely so; but must

These dreams be untrue? In dreaming do I give

Myself to truer faiths: my dreams are me.

I dream reality—must truth, in dreaming, be?

The hour grows late. Clouds caress the sky,

As sunset glows its tender violet light.

Within each hue lies dreams of dark and light;

The warm sunlight an omnipresent eye.

And in the clouds—to feel my truthful I:

So sweetly singing as the moon turns bright,

The day turns dark and night enfolds my right.

In being true it is as if to die—

These hours pass; in solitude I live,

And darkness tells me what is wrongly just;

Upon the windowsill my moonlight must

Help carefully trace the truths I want to give…

I melt into the night: the night is me.

In every dream lies what I want to be.

In finding who I am I ask the sky.

It answers solemnly: Go, find your flight.

And I go on to ask the dawning light,

That bids me look into my deepest eye.

What am I finding? Where is the mystery I?

If clouds can keep the sun from shining bright,

Them power to know myself is all my right;

Even with dwindling time my hopes don’t die.

Who is this I, that deserves such to live?

And how, in hiding, can he prove his just?

I seek me always. Always it’s a must:

If even I deny this hope I cannot give,

Then I am lost, and how will I be me,

When there is nothing I can truly be?

III

I love you. All the starts burning the sky

Are matchless to your swooping angel-flight.

Suffused within your warmth and touch so light

Is rest, beneath the lashes of your eye.

I love you. In this time of you and I,

Entwining as our flames burn ever bright,

And on my path of life, you on my right—

Let me be sated: in you I will die,

For oh! I love you. Will you let me live

In you? For it is foolish, seeking just

To live—I love, and otherwise I must

So immolate myself. My heart I give:

Will you, too, trust your treasured core to me?

I love you—let us passionately be.

I am. In such a phrase lives on the sky

Where certainty, in solitude, takes flight.

By knowing every way to reach the light,

They fight, they fade; they look through blinded eye.

A single path is left. And that is I—

I am. The sky is mine, so pure and bright.

And when I fly my soul is by my right,

My body will be left behind to die.

Thus when I know I am, I start to live.

Lest more of life be wasted than is just,

Believe—for so believing is a must.

Safe in myself, this certainty I give.

Thus what it is that lives on here in me,

It makes me me, and who I want to be.

Finale

I dreamt I was a cloud of evening sky.

And in the healing breeze I floated flight.

To east I saw the darkness killing light

But yet to west the sun would blind my eye.

Betwixt extremities I live—’tis I,

That dwell where sleep makes night and darkness bright.

Enchained between the two worlds, left and right,

The day has not yet come for me to die.

When do I wake? When I thus think I live,

Yet living in this world where death is just,

I learn, awake, to slumber—indeed, I must;

For if I lack in dreams I’ve naught to give.

This world is far from housing only me,

But since I am, out, out!—please let me be.

trésors:sequence, sonnet

dimanche, 17e-juin-2007 12:45 am - I verb you

for Twink

I dream you in the still night’s stolen sleep,

A rainbow-tinted bridge from mind to mind.

Even the darkness never strikes us blind,

And we its treasures take for us to keep.

The clock ticks on; minutes pile hours deep;

Our words a haven in ourselves we find,

That, questioning the fate we are consigned,

Sleep steals from us as through the night we leap.

Ah! sneak of night that you must surely be,

Mirage, migraine, timorous blasphemy,

When time steals by unnoticed, all is light.

You steal my sleep, my seconds all you take.

Awake, I sleep—when all sleep, I’m awake,

And you by me a dreaming in the night.

I breathe you when you walk the winds with me,

As breaths are breathed, your footsteps splash the rain.

Two solitudes’ commingling breaths fly free.

Through water we believe we live again,

Proclaiming baptism in the worlds we flee;

Each mountain, each crevasse of shared terrain—

A breathing world of water, wind, and glee—

Is breathed by us and built from our pain.

In loneliness I breathe you as my air:

A healing vent to soothe and to repair.

The rain is breathing quietly the wind.

Your voice over the air a breath of sun

As with the pouring blessings we do run—

The air is sweet, even if we have sinned.

I drink you with your laughter in your cell

Of flesh and bone. Your passing age a lie,

Your youth the clearest stream that passes me by.

What medicine you are when I’m unwell!

Concatenated angel-being from hell,

Behold your fountain of tears I never cry—

As I drink you my binds you will untie,

And through your waters secrets mine I tell.

Such hallowed wine, such potency in drink;

That in your depths my woes can truly sink.

In thirst I speak, oh! satiate my thirst:

All that I want, you give, a roaring flood,

And in your rivers flow my desperate blood.

Ere you turn dry I’ll leave the living first.

I eat you as my nightly food for thought;

In flowery words is writ both you and I.

And as we talk we do more than we ought

Under the watchful gaze of heaven’s eye.

What food are you that just for you I fought?

Your self, forbidden, on the boughs I spy—

The sweetest fruit can never be just bought,

For you I gave my wings and now not fly;

You, predator, I prey, yet eat not lust

When moonlight spills from crepuscular lips—

And though you are my missing nightly sleeps,

You feed me still; I eat you—time flies fast…

Regenerate your self, the dawn is drawing near,

And nourishment I’ll find tonight—you, here.

I love you as I love your universe:

Your youthful world, your heart, your hidden grey;

And though we rarely love by light of day,

The night shall keep our flames alive in verse.

In you, no sadness felt—such grateful curse;

No trouble do I love if love I may.

My memory shall keep if wish you stay

And truly, now, my love can do no worse.

Unselfish love, then, let it simply be:

No hoard, no wants—except that you are you,

And strange it seems that friendship, love offends—

But lest you be offended, loving me,

I shall not love you—we shall stay as two;

For love is weak that bless the closest friends.

trésors:sequence, sonnet

lundi, 27e-novembre-2006 12:08 pm - Ten Sonnets to the Sun

for Twink

I.

O Helios, if thou could only taste

The glory of thine light! ’Tis such a waste

For luminosity to fade; the faraway

Starlight will flounder in the place you lay.

This golden glow bids Time unmake its haste,

And slow its step. Oh! sacrament most chaste,

Is Baptism, and Heaven’s fiery clay

Will dwell in minds and hearts—the joyous rays!

The day is what it is by thine delight,

Yet chastised is th’audacity of night.

And when thy wingèd chariot flies through skies

Of azure tints, the world opens its eyes!

Thou, bringer of day’s light, I pray thee shine,

That Man may drink of morning’s air-bright wine.

II.

In dawn’s twilight, the sun’s shy face is shown

And morning stirs, to wake the sleeping trees.

The sky fades into blue; while, flying free,

The airy creatures soar in winds that blow

Around faux-cotton clouds. Swift jet-streams flow

In whorls in cirrus skies, and one can see

The daylight creep into the world. So, flee!—

That darkness melts away! Proud flowers grow!

Thus bustle lives again, and gladness rises,

That fear is chased away by Day’s great sun.

Look, see the wife and husband, father, son,

Frolic in morning’s dew-stained fresh surprises!

This time when night is past and day comes by,

Is time for hope; pray, no more tears to dry.

III.

’Tis said that Tonatiuh has caused the death

Of twenty thousand every year. But how!—

’Tis justified, for Sol’s a miracle…The scowl

In deep dark clouds affect me scarce.

I look up to the heavens. A wind-light breath

Of fragrance breezes by. No presence, foul

Or otherwise, could push me off this bough

Of awe on which I ride. The air is fresh!

The sun is poetry in light, and strong

He shines; his reign above the skies is long.

To watch the sunrise is a simple pleasure,

In colour changes lie the widest measure

Of skies’ light-paint. So therein, o’er the line

Is laid the sphere which guides the human eye.

IV.

This light doth irritate my tired eyes,

My weary sight I do not want. Each face

I see in day is hateful, like the flies

Which flit ’round pigsties in rude haste.

Oh you, the Sun, you reveal all the lies

Which constitute the masks of Life’s dark ways;

Away with thee! My heart is cold as ice,

And thine gold warmth reminds me of the waste

My life has been. Oh Sun of gladness bright!

I know not what to feel beneath thine light,

But thine great face will fade to furthest night…

To free my frozen soul, I pray thee shine,

Like thunder’s rumbles, like fork-lightning’s lines,

Like jewelled thrones of ancient pasts behind.

I bid thee rise! and shoulder on the strain

Of yet another day; as Time crawls on,

So every day is carved into the grain

That patterns trees. Each pictured morn

Is perfect on its own, and with the rain

The beauty of the scene is made forlorn,

And light, austere. There, onwards chugs that train

Of Time, and th’fabric of the skies is torn.

Thus Light is born, and against lives the day

Whose sameness lies in difference. So stay;

Worship the miracle of heavens. Rise and shine—

In light is found the life of purest wine.

I pray thee rise! make haste; the time is nigh,

Much needs be done before the Sun peaks high.

VI.

It is this light which feeds the fledgling day

And ’tis this warmth paves the garden way

With leaves and grass. In quietude the rose

Opens its heart, which Life accepts, and throws

A careless kiss to passing birds. There lays

The joy of Nature’s blessing—laughter gay

Adorns the air, and silent bliss will grow

In summer-noon. This sunlight seems to flow

Like streams of clearly running water. There,

Observe the tranquil brooks, the winding rivers

Across which wood is quickly laid by beavers

That scurry back and forth. Oh! turn your fair

Bright face to look up at the sky, for Sol

Will—imperceptibly—forgive the bold.

VII.

How cruel thou art! in sinless rays of gold,

This light bombards the people down below,

…So like the spot under a viewing glass

Of warmth and heat and crimson skies’ deep rust.

This air is still as daytime swiftly flows

And in the sky the clouds will quietly grow

In grotesque shapes. How silent; time has passed,

The sun is past is peak, but it will last.

The day is hot in arid summer climes.

With strongly burning suns that always shine

In boundless skies. Horizons will define

The edge of light (that’s bright enough to blind).

This thirsty earth needs more than just this day

When ages pass like waters fade away.

VIII.

This shyly glowing face again brings day

To coiffured worlds and sweet words ne’er to say;

That coldly glinting warmth in seasoned ways

Will heat the skies, arousing those who lay

In slumber still. Rejoice, be glad, be gay!

Enthuse these theories, jump into the fray

Of daily life. This day-night interplay

Embodies Life; so live! with no delay!

The coloured sunrise raises shreds of hope

To brighter futures slyly it doth call,

In rays of amber from that fiery ball…

And lithe white clouds like lovers doth elope;

In Day we live: we love and lie and lust,

But Time steals by, – and we return to dust.

IX.

The sparrows sing; the blackbirds flit in trees.

And myriad melodies will fill the sky:

In chirping jewels Life will pass you by,

And such it is that daylight quickly flees.

So sweeps the winds up smoothly storming lees

To clear the skies of warmth. Vermilion dyes

Doth wash to greyest mauve: the clouds, like flies,

Orbit a light that’s quenched by Time’s decree.

Oh, what a loss it is, for light to fade,

And change to opposites. There evening’s shade

Will cross that subtle line ‘twixt night and day—

We bid thee farewell; thou wilt go that way…

This cycle never-ending feeds our minds,

Whose rest and actions merely serve to blind.

X.
So there thou art! Fie to they face, for Time
Will douse your fires; may darkness and the night
Take thee! For suffering is the silent light
By which the world is shown. Our eyes are blind
To indiscretions of the day; such sight
Is better dead. Away! Of such a bright
Jewel, there must be frightful flaws to find—
But fie to thee! and we will close our minds…
And now, as Time draws on, they face doth sink
Below the horizons, a light that blinks
Out for the night. A mirror to thy face,
Then stare down this dark light—to live unfazed!
There, Time flows on as ceaseless as the stream
And thy bright face repealed to realms of dreams.