Classic Poem

And You, it seems, are not there:
A paler objectivity beckons,
A colder glance, a more distant
Pattern;
A dream of provisionality, to
Lull the terror of the object.

Not the first frenzied rush
Into the world’s lap, the
Mistressing of otherness, the cold
Greek glare
Through fancy’s yielding columns.

Not the implemental urge
Desecrating thinghood,
Sacrificing the world’s inviolability
In fires lit against the sky:
Wonder damned by human need.

Not the indifference
Of the inward gaze, enduring
A subject’s paralysis, betraying
To the outermost realm
A foreign lamp, flickering
On a golden edge.

Not earth as arena
Of warring gods, stale
To depose another’s conquest,
Covetous of space and place, to
Still the world’s face.

Not heaven as reward, sublimation
Of losses craving redemption, greed
For height, baptised as
Abstinence: cold steel in the promising sun
Of a remote shrine.

An older harmony, fainter
Rhythm, seep
From the old, old womb:
Bold road, lined with crucifixions,
Tears of flame, infolding the last
Garment before God.