Like a pebble plunging
to the depths of
the unsounded murk,
the great globe of
my orbits spun, still
reeling from Beauty’s kiss
my ears stuffed with
the wind of my passage,
the soul of Pride’s boot
on my chest stamp’d and
I, aswirl in mixed state –
Kleos’ voice sung my
farewell
as the seven heavens all
the constellations rung,
and the planets in their
stations list’ning stood
to the O-gape of my
breathless mouth aping
the circle of the moon
wide wandering where
up was down
and down was
the frequentative flutter of
fitful flight forestalling
the fateful fall
with Ignorance on my back
and I on Fear’s shoulders
as he clawed at both my
legs. High the tower must have
loomed and terrible was
my tumble until triumphant
as an angel rampant
on a field of stars my
wings snatched hold
the transient air
and I soared.
With one hand
on my hilt and the other
with my Quill, I caught
the tow’ring draft and climbed
and climbed, and climbed and
the music of the vaulted
sky thrummed as I recalled
Beauty’s fingers feather deep
and the clockwork steps
toward my eternal beloved.
O foresight!
Foresight which takes
us ceaselessly beyond and
places us where we ever
wish to be yet anxious
never to arrive. With
newfound tips of feather’d
flight I pinioned the sky
and tried to join the heavn’ly
mechanism. But I could no
more hold the intricacies
of that vast and ephemeral
machine in my sight than I could
hold Beauty in my arms
and the tears of my failures
rained
down:
down below:
the solemn temples, down below
the gorgeous palaces, down below
the cloud capp’d tow’rs, yea
down below, on the great globe
itself and out of sight.
The teeth of my gears would
not mesh, for as astronomy teaches:
The planets and the stars
show how the heavens go
but they do not
show how to go to heaven.
The fire of Beauty’s
touch cooled to ember in
my mortal frame and
I sensed a motion in thin air;
that stretched above the capp’d
clouds like the desert of the ocean
and from below I saw
the great grey waves part and mounded
breaks from the surface below.
In a moment of rationality
and instinct, ostensibly opposed
I drew my knees upon my chest
and dove.
The wind roared with my
descent and my wing’d
flight carved the clouds
asunder, to the left a
bank and to the right
a swerve, spiraling downwards
ever sensing
a great gaping maw
nipping at my feet
I could not see the
relentless pursuer as
the clouds blocked
discernment from afar
and soon as I thought I had
at last won the chase
was when I saw the hungry
mouth – wide as a mountain
and as inescapable as the dawn;
At last I beheld my pursuer
it was not a bird of prey,
nor leviathan, or sting’d ray
nor another like myself
but a serpentine eel long and
hungry – it was a lamprey
and the great O-gape of its
mouth was a ring of teeth
wicked and curved; the mound I
thought was the body
was merely a fin.
I could no more
fly past that mighty orifice
than sail an ocean
in a day –
and before I could
think aught else,
was consumed.
