The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
— W.B. Yeats
Escaping from December’s cold
You flee the sleety street,
Push past a door of hammered gold
And there your footsteps meet
A carpet marvelously made
As if with precious stones inlaid,
Sapphires and porphyry and jade
Winking beneath your feet.
The foyer just inside the door
Makes winter disappear.
The glow of warmth, a polished floor—
The arrases draw near.
A mirrored ballroom lies ahead,
The fabled place where all who tread
Anticipate with awe or dread
A blazing chandelier.
You gaze up from the door to see
What no one could forget:
Gold leaves where no tree ought to be,
A branching coronet
Whose whorls of burnished light ascend
To meet and blur and meld and blend,
And from those wrought-gold arms depend
The jewels of Indra’s net.
Refulgent webs of nothing twist
Above the startled guest.
Copies without a copyist
In multiples attest
That every winking bauble there
Suspended in the very air
Transcribes the glow of everywhere,
Reflecting all the rest.
You enter brazen, unafraid,
That place of great renown
With underfoot baroque brocade
And overhead a crown,
To find behind the tapestry
A window where no pane should be,
And there on tiptoe stand to see
The nothing sleet come down.
Out of time and out of mind,
Excited and annoyed,
In lieu of what you came to find
You contemplate the void
And interlope in fancy dress
An opera of emptiness,
A dénouement no one can guess,
With absence fully cloyed.
Perhaps in all these phrases lurk
The hard truths of our time:
That nothing lies outside the work
Nor aught outside the rhyme.
A skein of gems encloses all
While earthly kingdoms rise and fall
And mirrored creatures flit or crawl
Through luminance sublime.
You who would reflection make
Must all reflections send
Till every bone within you break,
Refractions without end.
A mnemonist may learn to face
The subjunctivity of grace
And be Curator of that place
Where bones and memory mend.
At last the time has come to quit
The well-appointed room
Where from the bench on which you sit
A waft of rare perfume
Leads you to one last place to see,
A courtyard where no space could be,
To find in fragrant unity
The nothing tree in bloom.
Kingdoms come and kingdoms go.
You keep an open mind —
An organ lately loath and slow,
By death of sense refined.
Enraged by truth, inflamed by doubt,
As one by one the lights wink out
You find the strength to do without
The work you leave behind.
| September 7, 2018 |
| << Previous | Next >> |
