I
what is love, if not a linguistic chasm?
The void which no verbs can vault,
the eternal song with no melody,
a soul image through a glass darkly .
The most useless of human things,
yet the thing by which we all move;
a god still arresting restless mortals,
dragging us to death & deification.
Witness the cybernetic carnal age,
where beauty & harmony are quaint.
when painters prefer ideas to paint,
the waste of passion is all you can see.
Life is a tacit technological aberration,
as we experience sensual incarnation,
with no words wasted on the ineffable,
and no courtship given to the uncatchable.
Would that muses still haunted men,
kindly they carried insight's burden;
we would take that well sung journey,
through hell, heaven and circles of stars.
II
Living with you in fields of asphodel,
all the while crying Et in Arcadia Ego,
and we would become most natural men,
noble savages, on a pilgrimage to Cythera.
you could be the shepherd of admiration,
and I could feel the warmth of your skin,
we two baptized by the autumnal sun,
you, the star steering me back to myself.
The sunset a canopy, golden foliage,
upon your hands, playing up your arm,
prancing with peaceful poignancy upon you,
erasing old and creating new bright beauty.
And then you get up from your repose;
you stand before the sun, screening light,
flesh surpasses cold & cracked marble:
for it doesn't have depth of delicate color.
Which blooms like cherry blossoms in cream
nor does it have mellifluous color of voice,
low and sonarus as silk summer winds—
your magnificent matter, the vehicle of form.
Then you would speak to me so wisely,
holding my face in your heated hands,
our compassion blooms like the Lotus;
flowering forth from the fountain of egoism
Kissing me in fields so gently & sweetly
drinking Hyacinths’ nectar from warm lips
as I brush away laurels from your soft hair,
losing my fingers in its supple honey.
Afraid to yield to conspicuous comfort,
a pleasure beyond even indolent gods,
to hold you for one moment in the sun,
to unite with you in transcendental solitude.
To know what is soft and firm in you,
and have you know the same within me,
to see every flaw as the highest adornment;
every virtue as flaw compared to the whole.
to experience every moment as eternity,
and to experience eternity as a moment,
to look back at our infinite peaceful past,
to gaze forward at our fecund future.
to know that neither can capture a glance,
nor can they understand volume of touch,
nor summarize the soft sound of smell,
nor paraphrase the hug of kind words.
Night falls on gracious & gentle love
Guiding my wandering wayward soul;
I dive into the Odyssey of your being,
sailing boldly on the ocean of your eyes.
Is this unrealized and unbridled passion,
tales of heroes after the Greek fashion,
O muse, I swear this to be most false:
it is the pairing of Athens and Jerusalem!
For by embracing my beautiful beloved,
over time I take a most peaceful flight,
from both past and present pagan worlds:
instead of willing power, I will being.
and then to see you as stained glass,
filtering multifaceted light of salvation:
God lives! He burns brightly in you
his manifest kingdom your embrace .
And to fall into the sublime depth
of beauty and truth remembered,
in the quiescent form of your light
that you give to Earth by being of it.
In enjoying graciously flawed flesh,
housing such are hidden gentle spirit,
it takes one glance to become immortal,
to possess knowledge transcending opinion .
In this crucifixion by love I am broken,
so that I may rise to the happiest life;
I have let you loose and lacerate my soul,
so when the scales fall, I have a living Requiem
III
But in our age muses no longer sing,
and I cannot be your modern lover,
we write not of inner transformation,
but the power of external experience.
I can't be your masculine ancient mate,
for love is now something exchanged
since one may create but not change,
history by a Arcadian excursus in verse.
Love is a t pure goddess who shines,
a good qua good, the efflorescence of light,
against the protean character of death
she makes all that is melted into air solid
what to do when the muses fly away
remain silent. Don't possess. Enjoy.
I remain silent, on your behalf:
It takes more love than 1000 lines.
love is a kind of penetrating silence,
of which no subtle words can sound,
but in my eyes is written everything said,
and your every small smile is my sonnet.
In not knowing your fallible flesh,
do I not know the immortal part of you,
the part which vanquishes concupiscence,
the noble part that orbits the stars.
Light, which has and shall not ever, injure,
the passion pushing all persons to good,
the laughter in the Onyx of modern twilight.
Hold this in me, and see it everywhere.
The allegiance of your courageous heart,
I cannot begin to understand, but look,
for a person whose eyes sing to you like mine,
who estimates you with brightest benevolence.
This meek shadow is all I can say;
it is the greatest embrace yet smallest,
but I think if God is, indeed, love
then The Word will speak from silence.
if love is silence, must the muses sing,
since ineffability is human freedom?
In negative capability we become gods,
and rest from love and apotheosis.
