Classic Poem

Not by water, fire or flesh
Does the world have that end
Which have it must in being, having been,
A world so privileged to begin
And long increase of self to spin,
And long outspinning, spinning out
To end of thread to have —

Not by water, fire or flesh,
Not by drinking back of self,
Not by flaming up of self,
Not by lavish plague to lie down
Sainted, rotted, rendered —

By words the world has end,
By words which brought
From first articulation, wordless stir,
To the last throbbing phrases.

Most world it is when quiets world
Into a listening and a thinking on
What world it was, into a learning of
What language in extreme
Makes full the famished grail
That never rose to brim
With the world's eked wine.

By one sign shall you know the end,
The rising to the destined brim,
The last succession, the words enough.
By one sign shall there be a world
More like to whole-world than your world
More like to mere-world.
By one sign shall you first know All,
See more than world of much contains:
The sign of emptiness,
An empty grail, an empty world
Of world drained to be world-full.

By one sign! And have you seen?
There is and was an empty grail,
For nothing is the world which rose
From the cup's bottom to never-full:
Nothing and never is that world.
And have you seen?
There is and was an empty grail.
And have you seen?

By two signs shall you know you see.
By two signs shall your much of world
Dissolve and solve into an empty grail.
By two signs shall you know the sign
By which to know a lacking world
And fullness forthheld emptily
In perfect mete of filling:
By two signs shall you know you see.

The first sign of the two signs
Shall be unlove of the sun.
The second sign of the two signs
Shall be unlife of the earth.
And the first with the second sign locked
Shall be undeath of the moon.

When an empty grail glows in the mind
Where once the moon wound faint without
Like hate of time afar constrained
To circle-slave in fond lament of time —
When the first and the second sign are one sign
Shall you see the grail, know the moon-sense,
Shall there be whole-world pouring brimful
Into an empty grail, an empty world,
An empty whole, a whole emptiness.

And the first sign of the two signs
By the knowing of which you shall know
The one sign by the knowing of which
Shall you first know All like a grail
Whole at last to its brim
In whole emptiness of All —
The first sign of the two signs
Shall be unlove of the sun.

Learn then of unlove of the sun,
Lest it be in you and you know it not.
Does your tongue not lazy hang, alick not
With afternoons and aeons like old sores?
It is an old sore, the first sore,
It is all the sores — the sun!

Does your tongue no more sick-pleasure?
Does it stiffen to a taste it tastes not yet?
Does your tongue then point your eyes away
From sights that like old sores lie open
To be pity-pleasures, to be sorrow-scenes
Where beauty festers, frighted to heal?
Now does your tongue thirst not to see
The sun-world sore, the inflammations?
Do your eyes no more with tears burn blind
When thought of other-where than sun-where
Commands your tongue to make report
Of other-sights, of mind-sights, tongue-sights?

From unlove of the sun, by one more glance
Sudden-small to read more true-fine,
Comes unlife of the earth: oh, learn,
Lest unlife of the earth be in you
And you know it not, to welcome
What unlove of the sun undarks —
Lest other-sights be seen, then lost
In morning-morrow's sting of sun-life.
Learn then of unlife of the earth.

If unlife of the earth be in you,
By a strength to move not shall you know it.
Do your legs awalk leave other-legs to stand?
Do your hands atouch leave other-hands to fold?
Does your head atwist leave other-head to straight?
Have you a life, and a life, a quick and a still,
And the quick to tardy and turn,
And the still to move not — allspeed in a
Lasting-over, lasting-other unto-until
Shall come the full know-step and know-sight?
Oh, have you vanished from yourself
Nor seek old where-to-be nor new?
Oh, do you break in scatter-self and stay-self,
In wander-world and stand-mind?

Then have you unlife, and then learn.
Undeath of moon has come on you,
The moon-grail clears and wholes,
An emptiness whole-shines at eye-thought.
See whole then: these are the signs.
The first sign and the second are the one sign.
The one sign, the first truth, the first of truth,
Is moon's undeath by empty grail signed.
The lesson of the first truth is an empty grail.
The first interpretation is by the eye.

Rubric for the Eye

See sun-wide, world-long, air-high;
See water-deep and earth-round.
Then let the eye look whole-impossible,
Look wider, longer, higher, deeper, rounder.
Let the thought sharpen as the eye dulls.
Let the thought see, let moon undazzle sun.
Sun of world, moon of word,
Eye-spilling live of eye, undeath of mind-sight —
Moon-clearly, emptily, full grail aspeak.