Shadows

And from those shadows
such pampered joys spread
that here I might reach out and touch.

And in your eyes
all time and no time.
How then can I but love?

And then comes mist
and the mountaintops are no more,
and above that a cry from the wilderness
which is the wind and scrambled scree:
untouchable, yet so whole.

I reach out for your breasts,
but they are rock-worn by our passing.
You gasp at my coldness,
but it is the black crow that I see rising
into those heights.
This even the shaking,
the obscenity of refusal.
And if I fathom this,
then I too am these heights
which also are depths,
for that is my soul,
that in my waking even before the sorrow,
sleep describing a lost tomorrow.

And when I see the hunter hunt,
I am the hunter,
yet when the hunter's spear be blunted,
I too am blunt, dumb, blunt-mouthed blunted.

So then, I turn from this perch upon the crag
and see the abyss,
see the undone and the not.
And reason veils the absurd
and masks the belly
which I have stroked and sea-bathed,
which thrills to the sombre, dark streams of madness,
for that is the blood.
I will take nothing else in my forgetfulness.
We have been, and that is enough.

Oh, no punishment in this,
our reprimand,
nor even subtle warning.
The puritan brothers are shipped away: cursed and erased.

The grove drips green,
and the mossy mound is soft in its calling.
Yet what if I hear not the whisper,
what if that is my falling?

And when I see the hunter hunt,
I am the hunter hunted.

And here I raze the terrace
where once I gathered grape.
And here I juggle huge boulders
which otherwise are weight.
This the sacrifice of innocence,
which is the daily sacrifice of innocence,
which is the bind and the gag:
the selfish, self-confirming face of conformity.

Is then the ocean reckless
in that it contains, consumes, subsumes?
Oh, devour this light and this dark.
You run before me and bow in grace,
and when I see the hunters hunt,
I see the hunter's face.
But if I am the hunter
who weaves time and cannot wait,
I then am both hunter and hunted,
beyond the garden gate.

The knife be sharp, the knife be blunted,
yet still I strike,
bold that you have retreated.