for liberation - not less of love but expanding
of love beyond desire, and so liberation
from the future as well as the past
driven by daemonic, chthonic
powers
they know me well who surround me here,
know well my afflictions and weakness
but i cannot say where
what one had expected
to start again
so the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing
no occupation either, but something given
and taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
ardour and selflessness and self-surrender
on the money'
dying is a habit
that's well-known to many
all these are usual
pastimes and drugs, and features of the press
release omens
by sortilege, or tea leaves, riddle the inevitable
with playing cards, fiddle with pentagrams
or barbituric acids, or dissect
the recurrent image into pre-conscious terrors-
to explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams
and always will be, some of them especially
whether on the shores of asia, or in the edgware road,
men's curiosity searches past and future
and clings to that dimension
that the future is a faded song, a royal rose or a lavender spray
of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,
pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened
and all shall be well and
all manner of thing shall be well
when the tongues of flames are in-folded
into the crowned knot of fire
and the fire and the rose are one
a condition of complete simplicity
costing not less than everything
you'll never see the bright moon again,
you've now achieved the unalterable
sum of moments granted you by fate
they'll long outlast our oblivion
and never know that we are gone
beneath the bleeding hands we feel
the sharp compassion of the healer's art
resolving the enigma of the fever chart
and do not think of the fruit of action
'on whatever sphere of being
the mind of a man may be intent
at the time of death' - that is the one action
which shall fructify in the lives of others
and the time of death is every moment
although we were not the backward look behind the assurance
of recorded history, the backward half-look
over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror
human kind
cannot bear very much reality
you are not the same people who left that station
or who will arrive at any terminus,
while the narrowing rails slide together behind you
watching the furrow that widens behind you,
you shall not think
the past is finished
the future is before us
or
not escaping from the past
into different lives, or into any future
i gaze but don't understand
it's as if they were strangers
see, they return, and bring us with them
i may not comprehend, may not remember
fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging
you are not those who saw the harbour
receding, or those who will disembark
though not to the ear,
the murmuring shell of time, and not in any language involved with past and future
but the agony abides
a symbol perfected in death
the taste of fruit, the taste of water,
that face returned to us in dream,
the first jasmine flowers of november,
the infinite yearning of the compass,
a book we thought forever lost,
the pulsing of a hexameter,
the little key that opens a house,
the smell of sandalwood or library,
the ancient name of a street,
the colourations of a map,
an unforeseen etymology,
the smoothness of a filed fingernail,
the date that we were searching for,
counting the twelve dark bell-strokes,
a sudden physical pain
where every word is at home,
taking its place to support the others,
the word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
an easy commerce of the old and the new,
the common word exact without vulgarity,
the formal word precise but not pedantic,
the complete consort dancing together
every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
every poem an epitaph
in the brown baked features
the eyes of a familiar compound ghost
both intimate and unidentifiable
the evening with the photograph album
you would have to put off
sense and notion
see, they depart, and we go with them
what
are you here?
and he
i am not eager to rehearse
my thoughts and theory which you have forgotten