The Poet

That time when I moved among happenings

in the midst of my mournful devotions; that time

when I cherished a leaflet of quartz,

at gaze in a lifetime’s vocation.

I ranged in the markets of avarice

where goodness is bought for a price, breathed

the insensate miasmas of envy, the inhuman

contention of masks and existences.

I endured in the bog-dweller’s element; the lily

that breaks on the water in a sudden

disturbance of bubbles and blossoms, devoured me.

Whatever the foot sought, the spirit deflected,

or sheered toward the fang of the pit.

So my poems took being, in travail

retrieved from the thorn, like a penance,

wrenched by a seizure of hands, out of solitude;

or they parted for burial

their secretest flower in immodesty’s garden.

Estranged to myself, like shadow on water,

that moves through a corridor’s fathoms,

I sped through the exile of each man’s existence,

this way and that, and so, to habitual loathing;

for I saw that their being was this: to stifle

one half of existence’s fullness like fish

in an alien limit of ocean. And there,

in immensity’s mire, I encountered their death;

Death grazing the barriers,

Death opening roadways and doorways.