BLESSED be this place,
More blessed still this tower;
A ******, arrogant power
Rose out of the race
Uttering, mastering it,
Rose like these walls from these
Storm-beaten cottages --
In mockery I have set
A powerful emblem up,
And sing it rhyme upon rhyme
In mockery of a time
HaIf dead at the top.
Alexandria's was a beacon tower, and Babylon's
An image of the moving heavens, a log-book of the
sun's journey and the moon's;
And Shelley had his towers, thought's crowned powers
he called them once.
I declare this tower is my symbol; I declare
This winding, gyring, spiring treadmill of a stair is my
ancestral stair;
That Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burke
have travelled there.
Swift beating on his breast in sibylline frenzy blind
Because the heart in his blood-sodden breast had
dragged him down into mankind,
Goldsmith deliberately sipping at the honey-*** of his
mind,
And haughtier-headed Burke that proved the State a
tree,
That this unconquerable labyrinth of the birds, cen-
tury after century,
Cast but dead leaves to mathematical equality;
And God-appointed Berkeley that proved all things a
dream,
That this pragmatical, preposterous pig of a world, its
farrow that so solid seem,
Must vanish on the instant if the mind but change its
theme;
Saeva Indignatio and the labourer's hire,
The strength that gives our blood and state magnani-
mity of its own desire;
Everything that is not God consumed with intellectual
fire.
III
The purity of the unclouded moon
Has flung its atrowy shaft upon the floor.
Seven centuries have passed and it is pure,
The blood of innocence has left no stain.
There, on blood-saturated ground, have stood
Soldier, assassin, executioner.
Whether for daily pittance or in blind fear
Or out of abstract hatred, and shed blood,
But could not cast a single jet thereon.
Odour of blood on the ancestral stair!
And we that have shed none must gather there
And clamour in drunken frenzy for the moon.

IV
Upon the dusty, glittering windows cling,
And seem to cling upon the moonlit skies,
Tortoiseshell butterflies, peacock butterflies,
A couple of night-moths are on the wing.
Is every modern nation like the tower,
Half dead at the top? No matter what I said,
For wisdom is the property of the dead,
A something incompatible with life; and power,
Like everything that has the stain of blood,
A property of the living; but no stain
Can come upon the visage of the moon
When it has looked in glory from a cloud.

In a playful vision sent
Your ****** homologue
Of amber shins and pale phalanges
Weaves four-leaved clovers.

In response,
***** spurs
And protean winged descent
To float into your kaleidoscopic star:
Gliding,
Freely falling,
To rest in lace extremities.

There in our bed of sensual feet,
Sunflowers breath,
Whose burnished rotating petals
Gather me in wisps,
Each spiral frond,
Gyring
Before death's voids
Is drawn in purls.

And in pleasures held,
Cossetted in latticed limbs,
A ***** lustrous rich embrace;
Denuded and alive!
And with abandon kissed:

    Bony toes
    Tendons
    Deep arches
    Shins
    Ankles,
    Sweetmeats,
    Light and delicate.

As here between pretty shins
And fleshy silken feet
Our ascent begins
Rising,
From low regions,
To scale new night,
And crown our heights.

This lovers' leap into prismatic
reproduction
In the empty Cosmic wastes
     In a web is caught!
Where feet and toes inspire
Continuity for pointed stars.

As material possibilities collide
The lust for life
Is born in non-existence:
So in our nest of feet,
Mating in the game
With heads thrown back,
Of lust drink deeply we.

FOR certain minutes at the least
That crafty demon and that loud beast
That plague me day and night
Ran out of my sight;
Though I had long perned in the gyre,
Between my hatred and desire.
I saw my freedom won
And all laugh in the sun.
The glittering eyes in a death's head
Of old Luke Wadding's portrait said
Welcome, and the Ormondes all
Nodded upon the wall,
And even Strafford smiled as though
It made him happier to know
I understood his plan.
Now that the loud beast ran
There was no portrait in the Gallery
But beckoned to sweet company,
For all men's thoughts grew clear
Being dear as mine are dear.
But soon a tear-drop started up,
For aimless joy had made me stop
Beside the little lake
To watch a white gull take
A bit of bread thrown up into the air;
Now gyring down and perning there
He splashed where an absurd
Portly green-pated bird
Shook off the water from his back;
Being no more demoniac
A stupid happy creature
Could rouse my whole nature.
Yet I am certain as can be
That every natural victory
Belongs to beast or demon,
That never yet had freeman
Right mastery of natural things,
And that mere growing old, that brings
Chilled blood, this sweetness brought;
Yet have no dearer thought
Than that I may find out a way
To make it linger half a day.
O what a sweetness strayed
Through barren Thebaid,
Or by the Mareotic sea
When that exultant Anthony
And twice a thousand more
Starved upon the shore
And withered to a bag of bones!
What had the Caesars but their thrones?

BELOVED, gaze in thine own heart,
The holy tree is growing there;
From joy the holy branches start,
And all the trembling flowers they bear.
The changing colours of its fruit
Have dowered the stars with metry light;
The surety of its hidden root
Has planted quiet in the night;
The shaking of its leafy head
Has given the waves their melody,
And made my lips and music wed,
Murmuring a wizard song for thee.
There the Joves a circle go,
The flaming circle of our days,
Gyring, spiring to and fro
In those great ignorant leafy ways;
Remembering all that shaken hair
And how the winged sandals dart,
Thine eyes grow full of tender care:
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.
Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile.
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while;
For there a fatal image grows
That the stormy night receives,
Roots half hidden under snows,
Broken boughs and blackened leaves.
For ill things turn to barrenness
In the dim glass the demons hold,
The glass of outer weariness,
Made when God slept in times of old.
There, through the broken branches, go
The ravens of unresting thought;
Flying, crying, to and fro,
Cruel claw and hungry throat,
Or else they stand and sniff the wind,
And shake their ragged wings; alas!
Thy tender eyes grow all unkind:
Gaze no more in the bitter glass.

I
4:30 A.M.

The Moon shines directly into my eyes as I sit,
prosaic and calm,
It some 238,900 miles away and they say
3.8 centimeters farther from Earth than
this time last year.
I read of a plan to monetize the Moon.
Monetize the Moon?
The Moon must have read the same
article and thought,
Enough of this Moon/June
tune/loon business.
I’m finding myself a nice uninhabited planet
to lighten, to orbit, to influence.
Monetizing is not in my Moon Contract.
So long, Sucker Earthlings!

II
Cosmic Matters

The early morning moon is cloud-smudged,
exhausted from a week of heat,
can’t pull itself together to make a tight circle.  
Really, though, some galactic giant gyring from orb to orb
could have step-****** the moon - on its way to Mars,
perhaps -
and discombobulated the moon’s defined
roundness
and now, its pale, borrowed, low-karat shine  
is disheveled and bleary.  
This leaves me with two questions:  
Will it be cooler today?  
How did the cosmic giant miss Earth…or did it?

III
Missing Moon

Is it the June Gloom’s shroud
that hides your early morning glory
or is it not that time in your cycle,
for your cold elegant light is unseen
and my morning writing is not illuminated by you
but by a small bulb controlled with a switch.

you write like a sea
I see

gyring and free
stubbornly

flapping only
to be

easy
to see

your profanity
holy

in its naivety,
wholly

scanty,
heavy

with plenty,
empty

like sea,
pretty

for me
for me partially

for you only
hesitantly

for world boldly
bare to see

you write like a sea
lady

toiling sweetly
to monotony

and plea
howling all free

free
ah, lovely

like the slavery
of a sea

Yesterday I met a poet and her poems
She stands and fights, lives by her heart
A heart of gold, never cold, never old

I see it in her
A spirit untethered by all but the vast sky and blue sea and the seven colors of the rainbow upon her shoulders strong
She knows the sore heart of a falcon gyring above red desert dust
She knows the blues of red sunsets on a crisp starlit winter night
She knows the wordless mantras of dying stars shedding their last stardusts above the great barrier reef
Knows how to number them off like lambs to sleep

She has walked from the break of dawn when the skies are stained with fiery reds
Till the last light of dusk when stars powder the night sky like salt scattered onto a black tablecloth
From the the shadowy allies of Tripoli
(Where peeling graffitis of revolutions beckon from the cracks and crevices of old)
To the stunning waves of Bell Beach
(Where every slam of killer waves against the reef synchs on beat with her pounding heart)
From every lash of the wind upon the harsh highlands of Tibet
To home, where the heart is.

Counted every rise of the full moon
Atop the moonlit snow of Kilimanjaro's peak
A lone soul exhaling softly between the downbeats of the moon's sighs
Knowing everything, everything
Everything goes

And to this poet I give my wishes true
That until we meet again
May the road rise up to meet you
May the wind be always at your back

May you armor yourself with the emotions you bleed into words and the glasses of sorrow you get drunk on like art
Meld yourself into the art you paint
Turn every tear dredged from unassuaged moments of need into an artistic experiment called pain
So this world can hurt you
No more

Live through every second not just along
As though shrouded in a dream but very much alive
Shadows of people flicker across the stage we call life
Living their hearts on Cupid's lasso and necks in a tightening noose called time
In one's brief lifetime we can only bear witness to so many plays before we too
Fade away

But you, dear poet, are not a shadow
You're the black wind of the seven seas
You're the lone wolf who treks the seven billion unspoken corners of earth
Collecting lost tales from parchments yellowed with time and recounting them to winter constellations high above

May you leave no trace but your poems
So I can find you once again
Maybe not in this lifetime but in the end
We'd promise to meet in the far Milky Way

Wind blows through the gate of the ice castle.
Enameled are the eaves with milky snow,
Transparent candles drop pendulous tears, and I
Hunger for restoration, roasted sweet potatoes in my pockets
A man sprinkles salt on the stairs like a dutiful farmer.
Fogged and unduly broken, I drop a rose into the crevice.
My lips shudder from the meteoric love of all things unspoken.
Breath to breath, from birth to death
The golden endurance of a pilgrim soul
To the twilight of m’rrow.

I inflame my white flag, my unhinged, defeated soul.
In the gyring moment, the pang of birth,
I pierce myself with a blade, your Poetry,
Calling the prayer with a kingly tread.
Caress me gently, Teacher, for I bombard my paltry existence
For a mission of loving sadness.
Nymphs danced between the birches on a pile of snow,
And I sit to breathe the scars of memories.