Classic Poem

It was a night of universal purpose
A night found in Schopenhauer
A kind of carved marble darkness

That flowed as fluidly as a river

It was the speculation of the coming dawn
& the twin of Schopenhauer's shadow
It was all soul devoid of reason

& just as that soul worked
Its cool magic & the day's light
Arrived like an owl sketching the shadows

With feathers of cooling ash
All along the harbor of sensual remorse
Such a prolonged white silence fell

Such a glare of weather such a design of mind
All holding themselves to the celestial wind
& beyond the black of the cemeteries

Beyond the shipwrecks & restless barking corpses
Beyond the coffins lined with an ancient purple sky
Beyond the air of the stoneless temples

& their ever-rippling echoes I knew
I would not understand the (fecund) humid green
Nor those threads of your abrupt departure

Stitching the dead into such soft blankets
As you sailed into the suspect future its jewels of moon
Shining like bared studs in Cerebus's leather collar

Used by permission of the author.