Classic Poem

Unless we agree each self
is a fragment or atom of
one universal self — seeing
that what we call self, just
as what we call God,
is everywhere manifest
until we seek it, and then
is nowhere — the selves,
I mean, not of you and me only
but of elephants, trees,
bugs, bi-valves,
even minerals;

agree that each one is torn,
because cosmos itself is torn,
between All and Nothing — All
dimensions and None —

then we've no metaphor
save a few broken coronets
and moth-riddled ermines
for whatever incal-
culable pan-demon it is
that scales the known stars toward Virgo
and tears us, bloody and gasping,
out of nonentity for one
blink at a galactic opera. Because
there'd be no caring for us in it.
Whereas we feel there must be.
Which is only to say our own
sorrows could be true fractals
of one cosmic sorrow. So —
we agree, perhaps, after all,
Everything , even the Ultimate
Tearer, is torn? If true,

then you — then I — then Juliet —
wherever we are in our scripts
and however powerless
to redact any preceding
or concluding page, still
may be certain the Author wept.









By permission of the author.

Last night when the sun went down
and the light lifted up — it was levered
off the last high land westward
through tier after tier of cirrus
and cumulus cloud,
all the way to the zenith — such
a finale of auroral cold fire
no one could speak here. We stood
like pillars of salt looking after it
a long while till it all faded
into grey and dark-grey. Oh,
how do we survive it, how
do we survive, when more than we dared dream of
is given, for no reason, and for no reason
taken away.