Reading 25 - I See but Dimly Through the Veil
I See but Dimly Through the Veil
O mountains, O seas;
To black gullies terribly unstable I cling,
Perched crumbling on buttresses,
Precarious on razorwire traverses,
My naked heart sings;
Running madly through fires and fogs,
On bridges, on landings, on exposed promenades;
Sandblasted! Spraystung! Saltwhipped!
Jagged at the bare lips of the caldera I flail,
Howling to Venus, to Jupiter, to Mars,
Howling to Sirius, White Dog of winter,
Low lantern to my fecund love;
To the great dark whale backed mountain, dark;
I sing the blue shock of sunset, swimming
Against magenta circles, pale in a scattered sky
The dark ridge of dark hills rides,
The intense core of beauty, dark awesome heart,
I contemplate, long drawn out;
Like hot metal quenched,
My naked body diving into cool green ponds,
Silver sodium on a tray of ice,
O fumes! O plumes! The crackle of life;
Touch with sensitive fingers and feel
the folds of old discoloured manuscripts;
Admire the elegance of mathematical proofs
hanging as art on my gallery walls;
Listen to the campfire stories of youth
bowled over plates of treacled beans;
Taste rich red wine in the heady aromatic cellars
where sultry beauties whimbrel in the ripe rain;
Smell the sun rising off the great northern forest
as the first brave bird of spring sings;
See the huge dark whale backed mountain dark
dark-rising from the vast verdant plain;
O naked heart, reveal your mysteries!
Strip off your veil!
Fracture your pig-iron mask!
Split your cotton-wool cocoon!
Come;
Raid the quantum frontier!
Surf the Schwartzschild radius!
Ride the wildcat singularities!
Blackheart, Blackblood, Blackbrain
Powerless against the cold hard rock
Beaten against the cold dark stone
Blackheart, Blackguts, Blackbrain
Fighting against the cold hard rock
Naked against the cold dark stone
O helium fusing wagons of heat!
O cauterised barrels of grief!
Awesome, tempestuous prophet I rage
Tethered, fevered, ensnared; In poisonous
pitchblende heat I splice the last guanine link
And mix saltpetre in my rusting can
And scream the tormented lullabies of the insane
Until the numbing malarious fibres loosen their hold
And I kick open my concrete tomb
And the sulphurous blossom of my nightshade poetry
rains down, creative and alive.
This magic sends a schism through me
The raw shock of beauty
Each time the veil is removed
And my sensual sands riot
