Ecstatic Persistence

Leonard Schwartz

Continuous revelation of,

no subject but light.

Too, tied to the stake

of foundational doubt.

Steam off rocks of this perception.

And snow monkeys. On their thrones.

Of stone. In the steam. Illuminated.

Action taken equals miracle.

Burning stake.

Or a world away:

a lament in tones so sweet the tones

permeate

This composition,

this drinking

establishment—

  no, never the establishment—

  (we seek to inhabit

what cannot be inhabited)

Yet the eye emerges whole.

Outside in that world

The voice dances as through trees

and who moves is like the bird

Deigning to primogeniture

knowing dark bloods and eye-buds

A snow monkey giving birth in snow

a splash of red, perception fired and fed

Where they eat the golden apples

and never get old and so forth

Figures on a stage

that lead miniature lives, zoo creatures

in the action of language

Wildness withheld, hope to uncover

The being outside the bars

at labor in the steam off those waters.

  Would ask the music for help.

Would listen till I was out of my head

only they’d rightly say

escapist.

So when the song

    is sealed,

let variously dispersed elves

Congregate

Let the ale in a glass, amber in color,

be drunk

And be replaced with ale, equally amber

Equally amber

Until the snow monkey

until the snow monkey

until the snow monkey.