48
If my sun set in the west
I could not bear it!
And if it rose in the east—
I must annul it!
Myself demands
Rarest Circuit.
’Twere natural history
To set in the west,—
But my sun’s imperialcy
Hath this reversed,—
To reach all Lands
Exquisite and first.
49
God said, “I made a man
Out of clay—
But so bright he, he spun
Himself to brightest Day
Till he was all shining gold,
And oh,
He was lovely to behold!
But in his hands held he a bow
Aimed at me who created
Him. And I said,
‘Wouldst murder me
Who am thy Fountainhead!’
Then spoke he the man of gold:
‘I will not
Murder thee! I do but
Measure thee. Hold
Thy peace.’ And this I did.
But I was curious
Of this so regal head.
‘Give thy name!’—‘Sir! Genius.’”
50
Countering the general eye,
To surpass it quietly,
These eyes stay in private sockets
To detect the invisible currents
Whose metrics is immortality.
In consequence whereof,
These lines are charged
With ions heretic! O do not touch
Here unless you are prepared
Or can sustain the hidden
Voltage. Move away, gaze away,
Or yield the Self gracefully too.
51
Sir, I commend to you the spirit
Of Lucifer, who was most beautiful
And wore in that proud skull
Rebellion like a jewel exquisite;
I adjure you to meekly admit
That seething genius pre-punctual,
Foreword to all the historical:
I beg you to give him his meet.
Brightest of archangels and brightest
Of demons—proud, incomparable Lucifer!
I alone of all men remember
And praise that magnificent zest
That sent God frantic to abuse
And doom this First, pioneering Genius.
52
Come to a conference with me!
We will confer About,
Till you are in Doubt.
This is the first Circumstance.
Come to a conference with me!
We will confer About,
Till you reject Without.
This is the second Circumstance.
Come to a conference with me!
We will confer About,
Till you see God Turned About.
This is the Immortal Circumstance!
53
I unfell completely from
As I fell completely into:
The Act most pure.
Than purity more clear
And excelling it:
But here was purest trapezist.
Agiler than mathematics
Preciser than God
I equated Life to Fire
In clearest ethics
And so—I am called Immoralist.
54
Now, if you will look in my brain
You will see not Because
But Cause—
The strict Rose whose clean
Light utters all my pain.
Dwelleth there my God
With a strict Rod
And a most luminous mien.
And He whippeth! lo how
He whippeth! O see
The rod’s velocity
In utterest unmercy
Carve, inflict upon this brow
The majesty of its doomèd Now.
55
Myself solving myself—
Myself Eye and Seen,
Patient and Psychologue—
With only God between.
Standing proud, immutable!
Dark, impenetrable!
The Power that balanceth me
Pierceless, immovable!
Leave thou a path to see
This formidable clay!
Create graceful vacancy,
Resign this Regency!
Else bear the terrible hell
Of Creator swerved aside
By mortal’s brave scalpel.
56
Imagination is Where God
Would have been born
But for Heaven,—
Yet that it comprises more
But increases the stature of its door.
Because that it weds
Both Heaven and Hell
And giveth Angel
Brother in Devil—it may not
Except by true gods be subjugate.
Even God, when He enters
Imagination’s door—lo!
He must bow—
It is such a Terrible Door
He enters with golden terror.
But Within—lo, behold
The Greatest Nativity—
The Nativity
Of Everness—more immortal
Than His own Soul.
I was not young long: I met the soul early:
Who took me to God at once: and, seeing
God the Incomparable Sight, I knelt my body
Humbly: whereupon God saw the star upon
My brow: stooped to kiss it: O then the
Blinding radiance there! explosion of all
My earthness: sparks flying till I was all
Embers: long, long did God hold me: till
He arose and bade me to rise saying: Now
Go back. Now go back from where you came.
Go back: Understanding is yours now. Only
Beware: beware! since you and God have lovered.
58
My mouth is very quiet
Reverencing the luminance of my brain:
If words must find an outlet
They must work with jewelled pain.
They must cut a way immaculate
To leave the brain incorrupt:
They must repay their Debt
Like archangels undropt.
The miracle of a word is to my mouth
The miracle of God in my brain:
Archangels holding to His North and South,
His East and West by an inviolable chain.
May blow his silver trumpet:
But he holds to his North or South,
Blows—and again is quiet.
59
From seeming to being is forever.
From birth
To forever.
Being’s seeming is not ever.
Being
Will not seem.
Is, is sovereign, nor needs
Applause.
Is independent rose.
60
The way my ideas think me
Is the way I unthink God.
As in the name of heaven I make hell
That is the way the Lord says me.
And all is adventure and danger
And I roll Him off cliffs and mountains
But fast as I am to push Him off
Fast am I to reach Him below.
And it may be then His turn to push me off,
I wait breathless for that terrible second:
And if He push me not, I turn around in anger:
“O art thou the God I would have!”
Then He pushes me and I plunge down, down!
And when He comes to help me up
I put my arms around Him, saying, “Brother,
Brother.”…This is the way we are.
61
Now let us announce me.
This is a very grave duty.
Let us announce me.
Announce me perfectly.
I am most of all, most.
The least of me is most.
God can see almost
The most He got to almost.
He was almost I
Until He could not die.
I was almost He
Until I learned to disagree.
62
Between one and one
Between integer and integer
Is itself’s nothing
The abstract zero.
Between I and I
Between self and self
Is itself’s everything
The abstract Hero
That self may equate to
Or keep ever as two.
To give you my permanent address
Will astound you
As myself have.
The days of no address
Or the days of interrogation
Are gone.
Have found.
Migration has escalade
Up or down
Or width here to there
But always a focus
An always-address.
Found.
Could have been Death
Had not Love supremed me.
Might have been less than
Death, or more.
But when God heard it
He abdicated grandly
And I was there without sound—
The Word.
64
Saw God dead but laughing.
Uttered the laugh for Him.
Heard my skull crack with doom
Tragedian laughing!
Peered into the cracked skull—
Saw the tragic monkhood
In the shape of God’s deathhead
Laughter upon its mouth a jewel.
Jewel bright, O Jewel bright,
Laughter of the Lord.
Laughter with eternity immured
O laugh bright, laugh bright.
Then did the Lord laugh louder
I laughing for Him,
I from the heart’s honeycomb
Feeding braver, braver,
Till all the universe was Laughter
But the Laughter of the Lord
O the Laughter of His Word
That could laugh only—after His murder.
65
Only birds, only mirrors
The unadulterated eye
Can see me. Their quick thought
Quickly congratulates
My braveries, my ardours,
My revolutionary sky,
My pledges, my truths unbought,
My axioms and postulates.
Congratulates without script
Being pure unenemies,
Unacademes and strict
Against falsities.
Degree without manuscript,
Degree without cease,
The cleanest theologies.
67
Since my Correspondence
With God
Dates all my luminance.
’Tis our Communions
Gives me pinions.
From Him
All my dazzling opinions—
Yet anonymous He
Unworded,
His conclusions in bankruptcy
Without my Finality!
68
My most. My most. O my lost!
O my bright, my ineradicable ghost.
At whose bright coast God seeks
Shelter and is lost is lost. O
Coast of Brightness. O cause of
Grief. O rose of purest grief.
O thou in my breast so stark and
Holy-bright. O thou melancholy
Light. Me. Me. My own perfidy.
O my most my most. O the bright
The beautiful the terrible Accost.
69
Flew birds east where I was.
Flung back the sun to see.
Fled in terror of Divinity
Brothering his Judas.
Birds! birds! birds!
My immortality is such
That I must love overmuch.
Yet a terror of herds
Seizes me, such a terror
As no mirror of hell can divulge.
Then who must assuage?
Judas, Judas!—Aggregate Traitor.
So that it could be essence
The history of within:
This was the method
My soul made for sin—
Beneath the circumstance
Of sensual lust
The divinest God
Uprose from the sinful crust.
He had not known me
Without the senses’ mystery!
Only the exactitude of sin
Had revealed Him within!
71
Or I myself in death
As I ascended—Death being more
Than philosophy. There was a Door
Made me hold my breath
And He was Outlined there.
Who? Who the Apparition?
Subject me to no explanation—
O but it was Flaming there!
The Outline of Fire
With velocity of Eternity!
But who? who?—Anonymity?
Most certainly not. Die—and aspire!
Then when He said no I knew yes.
There was no reason to say yes.
He said no.
But I knew yes.
I went ahead.
He said no, I knew yes.
I went ahead.
There was no reason not
I knew yes.
Knowing yes, going ahead, I knew no.
There was no reason not
He said no
I remembered He said so.
73
Nevermore to delay life
End the beginning
Devise the bravest perpendicular
To the squarest circle.
Assume the ending.
If He lies broken who broke Him?
Assume your innocence!
If you are broken who broke you?
Assume His innocence!
The perpendicular of heaven and death!
Now the wounded may rest.
If He—on your breast.
Rest, rest.
74
Time the traveller
Bringeth us little specimens
We call experience:
But the great Essences
The things not specimens
These must be of our Own Blood!
A resident God
Our beautiful blood’s miracle.
In our blood’s laboratory
We have this Task to do,
The Distillation of the Dew
With passion of the Tormented.
Till prismed in the blood,
O luminous and glowing,
We see this royal God bowing
Our lovely Parentage acknowledging!
75
Often, the livingness of death
More is than the livingness of life:
Then is the face of death
Brillianter than the face of love.
Creatrix of the austere fire
Death has a sensuous skull:
Peerless, merciless Beauty rare!
She is the Rose Original.
Of Hierusalem, whose pleasaunce
Is despair—whose peerless piety
Seduced Jesus for the Tree.
76
Sir, there’s a tower of fire in me
Binding me with terrible strength
The whole of my mortal length
And splitting brave the skull’s empery
In a rush of dauntless energy
To reach the most luminous ether.
I am the mortal grounding of a tower
Imminent with immortality.
The reasons of my skull avail not
Against this rush of fire, and whether
I assent or not, I am the creature
Must uphold the merciless bigot—
But I am loyal to the earth though through my skull
Descend God the Burning Jewel, like my betraying angel.
77
Were death not so involved
(I mean not the flesh’s death)
I should long have resolved
The tactics of her faith.
Her tissues move unmusketed,
Her soldiery is lean;
Their sandals are blanketed,
Yet they cut most keen.
Her soldiers are devout,
Their pulses are delicate;
Nor argue to debate—
But in phalanx move as one,
A fleet of angels, satin-shod;
They kiss like angels, every one,
And poison like an inverted God.
78
Mostly are we mostless
And neverness is all we become.
The tiger is tigerless
The flame is flameless.
Dig up Time like a tiger
Dig up the beautiful grave
The grave is graveless
And God is Godless.
I saw myself reflected
In the great eye of the grave.
I saw God helpless
And headless there.
Until I put my head on Him.
Then He uprose superb.
He took the body of me
And crumpled me to immortality.
79
Futurity’s equivalence to Now
Is incurable.
How far to see
Is my problem.
First, God, if you can remember
He is not undiscriminative love.
Unmythed God.
I unchurched Him and charged
Him manfully.
God is Alive now.
Possibility of His death is remote
He having now my head.
God’s old head I have given
To the crows.
His old eyes are pecked out
And dead!
Therefore I charge you, God,
To be careful of my head!
“I will be careful.”
Be careful of my head!
80
Faithfullest, for I am infidel!
Lexicon—renew thy charge!
Defeated antonymity,
Conjugated marge!
Of Infidel—to disavow
Be his true symmetry—
To unknow—
His brave geometry—
As by her pure artillery
—Firing, she but teaches Him
His Brightest Angelity!
81
In life I shone with so much death:
(For death is so very bright—
To see her splendid sight
Maketh to hold the breath).
With so much death I shone, I shone:
Many could not look at me
But thought such beauty savagery:
The lesser stooped to pick a stone.
And cast it at this Savage strange.
And cast it at my Light.
But none could dim my bright
That from Death was her pure exchange
For the heart I burnèd for her sake,
For the mind I brokèd for her sake.
82
O, the brightness of my dark!
Dark inwove of Light—
Where to grope is to see
That unconfrontable Instancy
Of my Lord God stretchèd stark,
Maniac without sight,
Of this ambitious brain.
Lo, thou espousèd there!
Lo, thou naked Rasputin!
Why wilt not arise and blare
Thy terrible chagrin
At this brain of thy make?
Why lieth trodden silent
When chagrin can slake?
“Because I am reverent.”
83
How shines my dark-world
Upon the sun! and gives it
Light for the earth-world—
While I lie in darkest defeat,
In dark most terror-complete.
How shines the sun-world
Upon the earth-world! and feeds it
My brilliance terror-hurled—
The sun’s immortal deceit,
Assumption of my immortal feat!
Be absolved, Sun, be absolved:
But only in the name of Love—
My dark-world God-revolved,
My dark-world you have pity of!
84
Progress from no or yes
Progress from life or death.
Or progress from not-who.
I progressed from Christ.
Christ progressed from me.
Whoever progresses from us
Progresses to secrecy.
Christ is my secret
I His secret!
I the Cross upon Him
He the Cross upon me.
I the Hand across His mouth
He the Hand across my mouth.
I the Word breaking His mouth
He the Word breaking my mouth.
85
The contraband of soul
Amongst mortality!
We must hide it
In direst secrecy!
Lest it be known to all
And their fingers point
“Judas!”—and fit
Us to the beams conjoint!
86
I betook me to the ways of Truth,
I burnished me for the field of death,
I tautened this fragile breath
So it could compass life with ruth—
I marshalled the beautiful skull
To look for the great undeath,
I found the necessary faith
In my heart that brave jewel.
So here was I, seeker and assaulter,
With Life to probe and prove:
In chastest ways only did I move
To find that great ultimate Center.
In this Diagram without fault
Lo, behold me—Center of the divine assault!
87
If: or: maybe.
These are the divisor words.
The Holy Ghost made these cruelties
In the image of His kindness.
These words divide justly.
To the honor of Love
The divisor words divide the heart
Purely. The cisions are clean.
The blades are keen.
The anguish has an immortal mien.
88
It is necessary to die livingly.
It is very necessary to do this.
I have every death of a life.
You can see it in my death.
Very well it is a commandment.
Go everyone to die livingly!
I command death very livingly.
It is necessary to do this.
Heart and brain must die livingly!
I have every life of a death.
You can see it in my life.
89
Now of two deaths
Life-death, Death-death
Look to the first:
The expiration by Thirst
The expiration within.
Now I died this way and
Created the vital death
Validing the final death.
Easily: for the dial was set in
Life: so Death ticked pure,
Timed in pulsing blood.
Now this is not death but God.
90
Within the city of my death
Comes Death melancholy,
For that he seeks to reap me
Who gave God His Head.
Yet if he touch me, ah! he
Slays but the body alone,
Still upon its Throne
Shall sit my Head.
More call me dead
Unless he kill my Head:
And that forever is upon
His Shoulders and He proud
To wear it, His diadem
From Life, the gem
He died for. So Death—I live!
91
By death only. Her revival of infinity
Declaimed silently. And this only.
My heart is there at the prophetic mouth.
Will you propel me fairly, Death?
Will you language me commensurately?
Meanwhile, I am Spanish, caballero.
In this ravishing world I am polite.
Tip my hat though inwardly I spit.
Because my heart is bitter at your
Prophetic mouth. My brain is gay.
My limbs are sensual. My heart only
Has the perils of immortality.
92
I told God to go away—
“For Thou art sick and can not
Bear man’s beauty:
Then, do Thou away and not
Come back till Thy Eyes see well:
Be Thy Body robust,
Thy Heart clean to spell
The beauty of mortal lust.
Away then my Lord till Thou
Art purified! I myself
Will know Thee then, and seek Thee
In man’s behalf.
But now Thou must away—
Thou must, lest Thou rot
Excessive in Adam’s eye
And he…forgive Thee not.”
93
For which I designed God perishable—
For I have designed man illustrious:
In whom He must seek hermitage
And break His austerity!
So have I made God perishable
Finite, lean and homeless:
Till His need brave Him to merge
With Adam’s mortal beauty.
Let His eyes then be forever triste
In most agony of the Christ!
Until He learn this couplement
For His perfect Jerusalem.
Aye, I His poet make this Tryst
For I would have Him capsized!
That He arise in healment
Perfect and a Gem.
Christ adventuring in my mind.
Christ bedding, loving a woman.
Christ Progenitor.
And you sulking, slinging me slime
You denouncing, damning me
Because my Christ is beautiful!
Christ living, human in my mind.
Christ honest, laughing, singing,
Nude musical!
95
In the chamber of my philosophy
God is instructed.
God is all naked
For reception of my energy.
God is all naked.
I am all incandescent.
God must begin His ascent
To me the Created.
God is instructed
In the ways of humanity.
God must humanize divinity
To be perfected.
God is my elected.
Him have I chosen
To be berosen.
Him have I elected.
God is my Work!
Music from the stark,
Original, marble Syllable!
96
First add-subtract
Until Identity.
Then to counteract
Divide-multiply
Until Unity.
Both emprised,
This mortality
Achieveth Christ—
Both comprised,
This perfection
Is dissolution!
Immortalled Christ!
97
God fears the poems of
Such as I!
Who am neither blind
Nor sly:
For that though I praise Him
I accuse!
His inhuman Godhood
I refuse.
For that though I seek Him
I repel Him!
As to unnerve Him.
Dissolution of God
Is my end:
That His Nullity
I may forfend.
Dissolution of the
Spermless God:
To the Aristocracy
Of the Living Blood.
98
Are you waiting for God’s Word
With so much patience?
Are you waiting and waiting
In clamor or silence?
Arise! Wait no more!
In the end is only one’s own nakedness!
Though God himself cleave to thee
Alas! He is messageless.
All He can do is embrace thee:
His mind was long ago dead.
He cleaveth to thee so meek:
Be gentle, be gentle to this crazèd Head!
99
Now I will tell you the Future
Of God. The future of God is
Failed. Jesus was too much
God. Since God is moving
Towards Man, and Man is moving
Towards God—they must meet
Sometime. O but God is always
A Failure! That Time is the
End of the world. When God
And Man do meet—they will
Be so bitter they will not speak.
100
Imagine God a peacock—
Imagine Him crucified,—
Over Him the beauty
Of great peacock feathers.
The Cross of the Peacock
Must not be denied.
Here begins our duty
To say our peacock prayers.
O Lord of peacocks,
Behold Thy tribe below!
O Peacock God,
Hear our peacock prayers!
God as a Peacock
Can suffer no shock.
Nazarene as Narcissu,
Behold all mankind bowing to you!
With every word, with every thought
With every act,
Besmirched I God;
But He, to counteract
Came down to calm the cruel mouth
And kiss the rebel brow,
And said not a word,
Nor loud, nor low!
And kissed once more the rebel brow,
In Godhood’s mystery.
But I, where God touched me,
O frantic! sought immediate cautery.
102
The wind shines,
The sun blows:
The leaves dig,
The roots unfold—
We are looking in the mirror
Of Narcissu!
The birds bloom,
The flowers fly:
The bees sing,
The birds sting!
We are looking in the mirror
Of Narcissu!
Who is very beautiful
Being Jesus,
By this mirror—
Seeing the image of man
Reflected there
(O the wind shines,
The sun blows:
The leaves dig,
The roots unfold)
O that very strange glass
O that very strange glass
Where the image of man
Is Judas.
103
Then we came unsinging
Because having looked at God
He was unrememberable!
There was nothing to say, He
Himself could not say the Word.
His priests, however, went on lying
They that never saw God.
But we who had seen Him were not able
To lie. Speechless we went our way
Muted in unmemory of the Lord.
104
Sphinx-mouthed Sage whose
Secret was uttered by
The Crucifixion:
Accept the Lie
Of Mankind that
Heard Thee not!
Who threw Thee a paper mourning-rose
At Thy Resurrection,
Jubilant
In paper religion
As at a carnival
’s carousal—
Accept the Fact that Even Thou
Must bend before
Humanity’s
Dark uncancellable brow—
Eternal fountain-ore
Of the Judas Kiss—
Accept Defeat! Accept Defeat!
Hope no more,
O Deluded!
It is terribly writ
That for ever and ever
Thou bleed!
105
I made myself to burn
Brightly to seek and learn
The unknowable temperature
Of God’s Calenture.
My mind I pitched to
Direst fever, as few
Or none ever may know:
I reached that glow!
Fevered to the bright, grand
Temperature, lo! His princely hand
Smote the lance of my mind:
“Not by the mind, O Blind!”
God not looking, sudden
I gripped His heart:
Cleft it in twain—division
Swift and alert,
Cision by the deft hand,
His Godhead’s clue
Finally to unwand
As the mind’s long due.
Immortal tissue riven,
Yet shrank I not;
But bent the mouth brazen
To the bleeding cut.
Ah, His secret was not fair,
O but so bitter!
My lips may not again fare
On blood of Cavalier!
107
Inexplicacy of birth
Has given me God’s eyes!
Miracle against earth
That my soul defies.
Ah, look into my eyes and see
God’s very Potency!
See the Power and the Glow
The ultimate Yes or No
Tremble on the verge of
My human eyes: God’s lens
Through which I see—all of love:
And die of His immortal suspense!
108
Silentness is not Silence.
He’s silent in silence whose
Soul’s geography is bare.
But silentness is deportment
Heroic, when the field is
Occupied. He’s silent in
Silentness—whose God is there,
Or when God lies dying,
A finger to His lips. Hush!
109
Allow God’s cowardice
A design—
Then it shines divine.
Bear Him no malice—
He will bloom the Word.
Though it come
The unforgettable Sum
At the tip of a sword.
110
Days of my youth
Call my amaze,
In so young a Blaze.
How kept I all
Without faint from Heat?
Who signed my Scroll
To be without limit?
I know, I know!—
The Angel Jesu!
Right on my brow
In mortality’s lieu.
111
When I mimic God,
And act His omnipotency—
Lo, how grand
Is His courtesy!
How gallantly He watches,
Without least murmur
Or demur,
Comprehending my fever.
But when God mimics me—
I stand in human rage
Unable, unable
To watch the stage!
112
Equality? Our
Souls equal?
As well say
Intersects are parallel.
Heaven centrifugal
These have a way
Distinct, unequivocal.
Elements, compounds
Of the Greater Rounds,
These—equal
To the Decimal?
113
God is Love…
Priest’s dixit!
Lie infinite
Of the Pulpit!
Making God
Indiscriminate,
In vain His
Son’s novitiate.
Nay, God makes
Strictest choices.
His Ledger demands
Brightest Invoices!
114
I will bespeak the mordaunce
In God’s heart. I threw the lance
That set it there. I know
Then the potency of the blow.
He moved not as I raised the
Lancèd hand. He stood a body
Whole of love. He commanded not
The figure of Loneness against
The sky. But my will was earnest!
I sent the lance and hurled him
Down. He fell on the rough rim
Of the earth. I helped him not
To rise. He arose and reviled not.
He walked to me but then I ran.
I am everyone called Man.
115
Death, corollary to Life
But only by Chronology.
Death, the supreme Theorem—
Life, the Corollary.
Whose antecedence—
Paradox divine—
Mathematicus Sublime
Created in inversed line.
A progression of wine
From fruit to poem.
Grape, the Corollary,
Wine, the Theorem.
116
A brilliance met me,
I was returning lifeward
Moving deathward. A brilliance
Like music not music
A brilliance like sun.
Do you not see it?
Like an imperishable word.
For I was a poet and death
And brilliant as despair
And moving deathward
To see lifeward.
Brilliance and brilliance
Together coming! O brilliances
All exceeding! At last
Christ with Judas.
117
In contest for myself
I live and do;
And such my atomy
Not to contest self
Itself should detest.
The investment is small—
Only the mortal I,—
Yet expenditure can appall
And leave self aghast.
But never capital expel
If atomy bear
Blood of His bequeathèd Ghost.
118
Had I not this life decreed,
With a clarity passional,
Most self to deed
With strictest diagonal,
Nor distilled it,
Nor audited proof
So oblique and exquisite.
Not merited, not heard
The birth of that Debt,
Of that syllable The Word
Heard only in the ricochet.
119
Now, there dwelt in me
Great unwisdom, of great decorum;
Of evil pride,
And great beauty:
Marching me with splendor,
Moving men to homage, whom
Their eyes denied
Visibility of horror.
But I saw Criste at last
Who rent my mask to doom:
Lo, how these men cried
And turned me Outcast!
120
Now that now
You are truer old
Time to learn to bow
Time to learn to hold
Self in homage.
Time to know to burn
Time to know to scorn
Unself in any place
In any when, in any with.
Time to unveil the face
Of the unknown pith:
Time to claim its grace
Time to confront this Face.
121
Does a mirror forget?
I believe it does not.
I believe a mirror will not forget
If you come to it superb.
Clear gaze of mirrors
Towards the gaze of God:
As the waters of Galilee
Upholding the superb Feet.
122
A wall is History.
I say, Illuminate this
To see Who hang there.
Their Instantness never will cease.
Not to see is not to unsee them.
The not-seer cannot unmake.
Sweet, murdered stars
Upon the solid black stake
Drift history immortalward.
Extension of the Wall
Otherwise the Fire will fall.
123
A true wrath requires reason.
A way of Truth is wrath.
Truth having no season
Truth may choose time and path.
The time of wrath is pure
When Truth is upward.
And path is Signature
Upon the chosen Guard.
Evilness in such is never.
He climates the Absolute.
This lightning fever
Requires imperial salute.
124
The shadow of a great man
Is always Christ.
Under the raiment
Looms the inevitability life-sized.
And who must speak
If not this Shadow?
Though it counterspeak the law
It need not go on tiptoe
Being the Christ Shadow:
Purity Intangible,
With death’s agility
To be uncrucifiable.
Always I did want more God
Than life could yield,
More God than God could give.
I betook me to His Rood,
Made it my chosen Field,
That I might truly live.
I bled in direst blood
And by Him twi-distilled,
Yet eluded He me as through a sieve.
Till He loosed again His Blood,
And over my soul it ruby-spilled,
And wove it into lovely mercy’s Hive.
126
Always and always the amaranth astir
Ages and ages assailing man the fair
Assuaging now afflicting now man the alone
Asking answers atop and across the bone.
Aliment of another air another star
Amator of all the alive and of attar
Amorous and adored, O altar of lovers fair
Assail now the less amorous and less fair.
Adam and all Adam’s young address and arrest
Afflict these with the music-auroral breast
Atone at last for the agony of Jesus most fair
Always and always teach His ascension rare.
Greatly imagine me, my God,
As greatly I imagine you: You will see
That my image is a load
You can most proudly bear:
My movements in you shall stir
Manly immortality.
Make me your living Forehead!
’Grave me beyond perishment as I
’Grave you so that you always lead.
As you are my spirit’s end,
Make me your spirit’s own! Bend
O bend to my urgency.
Be the Great Imaginer. Imagine me
Yourself tri-solved: O believe in Mortality.