Author Information
Myself
In every life lie crossroads, couched
in unredeeming uncertain acts
or thoughtful dissipation;
in both lie follies undreamed,
unknown but when the crossroads pass.
O what a marvelous, marveling work is man!
Such sickly thoughts, inactive, would bind us!
Such instant act, unthought, would bind our steps!
We plunge, vertiginous, upon the scene.
* * *
Oh once fair Eden, oh once deathless, oh now
halcyon days, I call now for your aid.
I held the world enshrined, all was in bloom,
when two diversions bantered in your boughs;
what better place, what strange perversion
forced us all, together, from your face?
And I, I do recall those days –
my recollection halts
when brought to one, perhaps.
He spoke to me, and he,
under some spell, began a speech:
"You wait here?
What castles
here
can hold you?
Outside this world
lies another,
where your desires
are all-potent,
your visions
infallible,
and all
expected ends
fulfilled."
And I, I watched that sallow countenance,
its eyes enraptured, convert to a cause,
and wondered, I confused by knowledge, how
that certainty could ever have had pause.
The other, curious, inconstant, bright
at times, at others wholly dim, had just
a question, just a heavy doubt
to halt complicity in raptured lust.
And I spoke: "How can this be? A place
with ever thought and vision,
preconception of the shape
of things made real? How done?"
And he "Eat
of the fruit –
it holds no death;
become like God.
Have you never
wondered, never
questioned how
this death would
come to pass?
You will
be torn
from death.
Know all;
bend the world
with thought."
He, slither-tongued, did press a fruit
before my eyes; I, still,
did watch as from afar as I
destroyed the golden globe.
A swirling dream: I saw castles,
dynasties, civil stations rise
and crumble – and my eyes discerned
the day-to-days to come,
the passing exchanges and hope
that bound me up, the dark
possibilities twined in some unending
helix – and, in short, I was afraid.
He’d told the expectation of himself,
and hoped to bind me fast to him
in terrible embrace,
but I now stood unmanned instead
with fruit-destructed grace.
And I, enraptured,
caught in dreams
and dreams of dreams,
did eat my fill.
What matter who
ate first,
took out a taste?
The sky was
palpable
and mute.
We waited,
looking
for His breath,
and fear took hold.
I, worried,
I, a man,
enclothed
myself;
my license
feared some end,
some cutting-out
of chaos:
punishment.
His actions held a hope: non serviam,
but nothing out of nothing can be cast,
and his but nothing was in ignorance
at last.
Somehow complicit with these two, I stood,
I heard the judgment of the One (myself?
perhaps). We saw some Eden in each
passing step, each almost perfect gesture,
but Eden was afar – and by our side,
for this doom was the fabric of our curse.
How like a god indeed had we become!
How infinite in reason and in act
within the world within me at the least –
how wholly separate and yet intact!
And how, oh how, shall I go on?
* * *
A world of worlds enworlded is our scene;
now let us make our visit, and step out
into the vale – a vale of storied tales
of scrivener, and lunatic, and wild
man enslaved to impulse, each a friend to each
in Eden, and cross-purposed once without.
And I, enworlded now, and so
distrusted and reviled
in pen strokes scratching on a page,
shall I hold fast and wait?
We tear ourselves apart, burn down reserves
of lighter balance: lost
and seeming innocent of all
forethought, our desperation
surely breaks what must be linked.
Shall I hold fast and die,
a tale of caution for all others come
in contest with the dark?
And I, I see it too,
I see the dark,
the danger to
our coexistence,
its rusting, breaking,
unrelenting gaze,
and I fear:
I fear the loss
of self
it brings, the death
of me in times denying
any but the strongest,
the scrivener –
his reasoned face aglow –
a chance to hold
himself above
the death of hopes,
of dreams,
of chaos born of
keeping us
in tenuous,
terrible,
affectionate,
affected embrace.
* * *
We all have seen her, wondered at a race
of heartbeat, shift of confidence and pulse,
engendered of some worry at the time,
betokening some hope for change, for safe
and stretching word to be the same. In all,
the stage is set for some Edenic time
when she and I together would hold court.
But I, at times the fool, at times
the sage, have no such thought;
in seeing all-potential I make none,
and, honest to a fault,
I am afraid. What balm can force
unwelcomed truth away?
What impropriety can wear
a mask of measured thought?
And we will never
last the stony truth.
And I – am struck
by this pale cast
of thought, am
unparalyzed
but have no power
to work as
those above,
and in dreams or
sullied thoughts
I make my preference
known.
Some folded figure stands, framed in the sky,
our waxen wings unreal in melting sun;
we flew, as if a vision ever new
in time, refurbished in the dooms
of works and days – this Icarus
or that, his burdened wax made molten
by some angry sun, did always move not
passersby at work, did always make
his storied splash alone from all the world.
And no Daedalus, Cumae-found, will build
our temples, sorrowing and old; no darkened
steps will mourn our passing, save our own,
but once enraptured, now but halting, cold.
But I – shall uncontrol be so
secure as not to leave
an Icarus in its wake? And where
will anyone hold back
the sea, tear out the stony truth
that distance make of where
we drown? And shall I set him free,
marauding as we pass,
or tear out wings affixed in wax
and wander with the dead?
And I – I see
and do not fear:
in keeping safe,
the world is staked.
Shall I, unredeemed,
unworried, hold back
the sword? Shall I
when freed
not rage in happy
all-potential act?
Why stay my hands,
why break the promise
of a night’s delights
for a new day’s careful,
cautious delectation?
And without me,
without my uncalculated
manipulations,
behold the man
unmanned!
And how, oh how, shall I go on?
* * *
In mind how fearlessly our future’s cast,
In heart how all-invisible,
how pallid, stretched upon
a canvas I the beast,
devourer I
the many-splendored I
an arabesque an I
uncountenanced and fresh
sprawls in the many visions of our course.
Father, do you see this frenzied
casting-out upon a page?
Shall I hold fast and wait upon the stage,
a silent arbiter for all the rest?
And I the serpent I the ghost
I enciphered I the gift
of tongues I
shifting I
slouching forth I:
shall I sit still,
and learn,
and calculate,
while futures subside
and die at my
inattention?
Let but one preconception hold,
but one misgiving stay,
or let one chaos’ bind be true
and one impulse hold sway
and all the calculated plans
and all our rushing dreams
will shatter, each both true and false –
and leave the house no beams.
Our Icarus, our Daedalus entwined,
our wings in raptured fires dripping hot
upon the flesh, hold fast or drop us
at each instant’s pause. O wan young flame,
O cipher, O instructor to us all,
shall we maintain our halt in static climes?
Shall every now be best and worst of times?
And I – shall I
distraction I
wild man I
perversion I
instantiation I
death of revisions I:
shall I sit idly by
and philosophize,
when revels and
lost findings
beckon on the other
side of town?
Shall I be
beaten back
by slackened canvas,
withered plumage,
the terror of foretelling of our days?
No! I shall go!
And I the cynic I the optimist
further the storied cause;
I all-potent I inactive
I lunatic I, one,
must follow as he tears his way.
I all-compassed I scrivener I divining
I composed I uncomposing I the source –
I one and all lack potency and drive
in thought and act when left without the rest.
And so the canny eye, the grasping fist is loosed
upon my world: and I, I shall go on.
