Slow pendulum swings in the depths of the window:
What do I see as I stretch out my limbs
On the highreaching gold as it arcs through the haze?
O the white robes of the masters,
O the fine rhetors with honeylaced syllables....
Here are the children, flock with one shepherd,
Whose hard, knowing eyes trace each ghost
Of a thought to the brain that would hide it—
There it is trapped,
And it's there it will be swiftly slain
Ere its shape is full-formed in the day's light,
Long ere it seep through the lips
Which would sing of new love
In the night of the world.
No is the word: no, no, and never. All are emulsified,
One eye, one brain, and one cloak for the many:
So must it be in the acid-choked maw of the Dragon.
But O! the vertiginous swing as I'm tossed
Through the silence, through doldrums
Of moonless, mad middles,
To another white-hot, raging side of the world,
To the window's red glazing,
Through which peer the still Iron Soldiers,
Monastically birthing, in Love's dialectic,
Clear wisdom born forth from the ages,
Sprung forth from the demon-drenched soil.
Fearful doom, swiftest death drop from hands, pour from eyes,
Like the lightning that rips through the welkin,
As Æon dissolves and the old world is hurled
From its lights and enchantments, on seas of black blood,
To drear places of anguished abandonment.
So mote it be. And so mote it be, till the turning,
The turning:
The turning again to the mænadic madness.... |
