Crapulous Impression

  Crapulous Impression(To J.S.)
Still life, still life…the high-lights shine
Hard and sharp on the bottles: the wine
Stands firmly solid in the glasses,
Smooth yellow ice, through which there passes
The lamp's bright pencil of down-struck light.
The fruits metallically gleam,
Globey in their heaped-up bowl,
And there are faces against the night
Of the outer room - faces that seem
Part of this still, still life…they've lost their soul.And amongst these frozen faces you smiled,
Surprised, surprisingly, like a child:
And out of the frozen welter of sound
Your voice came quietly, quietly.
"What about God?" you said. "I have found
Much to be said for Totality.
All, I take it, is God: God's all -
This bottle, for instance…" I recall,
Dimly, that you took God by the neck -
God-in-the-bottle - and pushed Him across:
But I, without a moment's loss
Moved God-in-the-salt in front and shouted: "Check!"

Darkness

 DarknessMy close-walled soul has never known
That innermost darkness, dazzling sight,
Like the blind point, whence the visions spring
In the core of the gazer's chrysolite…
The mystic darkness that laps God's throne
In a splendour beyond imagining,
So passing bright.But the many twisted darknesses
That range the city to and fro,
In aimless subtlety pass and part
And ebb and glutinously flow;
Darkness of lust and avarice,
Of the crippled body and the crooked heart…
These darknesses I know.

Doors Of The Temple

 Doors Of The TempleMany are the doors of the spirit that lead

Into the inmost shrine:

And I count the gates of the temple divine,

Since the god of the place is God indeed.

And these are the gates that God decreed

Should lead to his house: - kisses and wine,

Cool depths of thought, youth without rest,

And calm old age, prayer and desire,

The lover's and mother's breast,

The fire of sense and the poet's fire.But he that worships the gates alone,

Forgetting the shrine beyond, shall see

The great valves open suddenly,

Revealing, not God's radiant throne,

But the fires of wrath and agony.

Escape

EscapeI seek the quietude of stones
Or of great oxen, dewlap-deep
In meadows of lush grass, where sleep
Drifts, tufted, on the air or drones
On flowery traffic. Sleep atones
For sin, comforting eyes that weep.
O'er me, Lethean darkness, creep
Unfelt as tides through dead men's bones!In that metallic sea of hair,
Fragrance! I come to drown despair
Of wings in dark forgetfulness.
No love… Love is self-known, aspires
To heights unearthly. I ask less, -
Sleep born of satisfied desires.

Excerpt from "Soles Occidere Et Redire Possunt"

 Excerpt from "Soles Occidere Et Redire Possunt"Oh, how remote he walked along the street,
Jostling with other lumps of human meat!He was so tired. The café doors invite.
Caverned within them, still lingers the night
In shadowy coolness, soothing the seared sight.
He sat there smoking, soulless and wholly crass,
Sunk to the eyes in the warm sodden morass
Of his own guts, wearily, wearily
Ruminating visions of mortality -