I
Born blind, else bursting orbs for fellowship
Before a lunate sandal-heel dares daub
Its twin upon the road to Thebes,
We sound their hollow shells, drawn desertwards.
In Gnosis, ever fruitful, dwell
Charged images whose mobile treasures
Will enrich the sons of light who rush to battle:
Golden souls caparisoned in gold.....
But heed the fallen world, whose demagogic
Gibbons spew moist platitudes from out
A reek of abscess-clustered lip and lung--
The soul endures the spirit's ravages.
II
Dull chronologues perpend a hammered sliver,
Fixed of contour; diamantine chink,
Confected in some lapidary's leisure.
Now Aurora tints her smooth-shaved battleground,
Paired polar duellists' white barrier—
From bracket left: the muzzle bursts, its missile
Glinting freshly in its crystal frock,
Shocked motionless before the wall
Of Time; but there, behind the bricks,
The guardians are frolicking once more,
Still staging childhood and its sadique sequelæ
Through lava-langued, immense eternities.
To bracket-right! the landfill shudders,
Shifts its hæmorrhagic cannonade against
The flinching stellar mysophobes.
O Mnemosyne! linger languidly
In labyrinths and mirrored halls of state.
And though an Iron Age derides such benison,
Your eyes glow brighter, flaring orange-rose:
A summons has arrived, and drooping eyelids
Swiftly dart apart. Twinned suns relume
The dingy aureole.
She hurls
The thought-swift fire adown the halls
Whose mated mirrors limn prismatic orgies
Through the torqued and twined infinities.
The gate is fast, but swiftly dance the tumblers
In red ecstasy. Deliverance.
III
Within such sanctuary, lamps are lit;
Soon cinctured in the lustrous mystery,
With reverent regard, he rests his eye
Upon a silent rose.
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