The year is still being born.
No one has yet heard clearly
the first gasped cry.
Who can even tell
what it will be
(not boy or girl
but love or loss)?
Only one thing
can be written in the admissions:
No matter how old
this year may become
it will never see
you running
in wind or sun
or rain
or even snow
to me.
If you will stand the stronger of us now;
if you will armor well (and better than
my self has done) against the fletched betrayal
of all the senses clamoring for that
they had and learned and grew addicted to
by every pulse desire ignites to flares;
if you will firm your spine with rods of steel;
if you will stay in your far, secret place,
nor ever move toward me, noon or night,
reality or dream; if you will stop
your mouth's remembrance of the syllables
that shape my name, the knowledge in your mind
(deep-etched by long familiarity)
that moves the spinning numbers to reach out
along the endless miles of wire, and ring
the world, like tocsins, in my hidden room --
I say to you, if you will do these things,
will let compassion build a sturdier wall
to hide all sight and stop all sound and touch,
then I may somehow learn that being lost
in alien galaxies of loneliness
can be adjusted to, and breath will lift
my breast, unasked -- and I may live again.
Hollowed out of my heart,
old, beautiful words like opals,
like shimmering iris lakes,
lie mute, their spectrums lost . . .
Yearning over them, I am no longer young,
struck to elation and tall as spires,
having the blinding joy of harps
arrowing silver music in me. I am
no longer the chalice of white, fragile notes;
nevermore am I able to take verb and noun,
open their many amazements, and own
new worlds chiming opal nebulae!
Fear makes loneliness
an eternity of spine-ice --
Or is it loneliness
that tendrils out time
in icy hands, creating fear?
There is little to choose
between cause and effect.
Either or both move
like ghoulish terror
through veins
that once reared and ramped
all the lengths and articulations
of singing bones
in a fountaining fire of need,
of need-met.
It is not like that now.
Veins are jagged with crystallized
neverness.
Strange how many,
knowing me,
well and daily,
fail to see
what consuming
flame I bear
in my body's
ivory lair.
Strange how many
soon will stand
staring at my
scorch of land
(ash of blazing
self) with awe,
never knowing
what they saw.
Strange how many,
going forth
note the turning
wind is north --
note and never
even guess
why their pulse-warmth
will be less.
In the faraway afternoons of mood
while you are attempting to chain
the snarl of beast in your blood,
cramped over the dark waters again --
what does your glazed absorption see
in the slow, deepening underwater mirror?
The pale pearl features staring back at you,
holding you rapt to force you to the clearer
sight you have tried to claw from yourself;
the long, dark ribbons of fernlike hair
moved as by a wind, floating in the gulf
of adamant seas of brain, the opal-bare
indifference of smile, the sinuous ripple
of mooncold flesh, the gemmed and remembering eyes,
the beckoning fingers, languid in the dapple
of current-glint, the surf of drowned sighs?
This is your time. Now there are no more easy
escapes for you. What you look into and through
is I. It will always be I. The world grows hazy
as you topple down to the certain fate you always knew.
I have wept too much --
cancel out my tears.
I can weep no more.
We avoid each touch.
I am spent with all
the emotional fears --
Let the last stone fall.
Slam the wavering door.
When the stone's hard blow
adds the final bruise
to my livid heart,
I will stand, and go
in a strange, wild pride;
for I do not choose
that you see, inside,
how a death can start.
