Poetry

Whether it comes nude and ardent to you,

Or whether it beckons out of faraway cypresses;

Whether it be astute or swallowed up in your endangerment,

Embedded in your window’s sheen, an imperceptible enigma,

You, parting the clouds with imagination’s keenly lit tentacles,

Can graze the inalienable formalities of its murmur.

I can see plain day and its masters making the reaping machinery

Of purgatory glisten in the deepest star-fires of your eyes.

By all means, be beguiled by this.  And then I’ll describe

The agitation in my labyrinth—how exquisite it has been—

To lift from a wayside altar poetry’s quickening string—

How like being in love:  the injury cringing in the mirror

Vanishes as you pass it, loaded down with death, leaving

Behind only a dazzling gust of panic and happiness.