REVERBERATIONS
In the temple garden of my mind
A gong crashes:
Dream-birds shiver into splinters of ice.
The reverberations having hurdled
The threshold of intolerable pain,
Perhaps the delicate creatures,
In an excess of ecstasy,
Simply fell apart.
So many nights alone I've spent
Wondering how many nights remain
Alone to spend wondering and waiting.
Reverberations, not their source,
Enervate the soul's fine threads, sending
Numbing vibrations the length of its cords until,
Zombie-like, it can no longer detect the
Onset of simple changes like death.
Zombies, the so-called living dead,
Are merely minds lost
In the echoes of life's memories,
Short-circuits wandering,
Wanting to know
When will the waiting end?
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QUAKE-DANCING
I
Once he was, as on a stage, a bear,
A would-be dancing bear,
A lumbering, clumsy, sometimes stupid bear.
The man he loved was trying hard to teach
His hirsute partner how to dance.
The trainer, for his part,
Surely must have torn his hair
Wondering how you teach a stupid bear
To do a dance one shouldn't have to learn.
"Left by itself, the heart
Teaches the dancer breadth and form,"
He'd tell the stumbling bear.
But the bruin couldn't get it right.
Merely urging, "Dance," doesn't turn
A four-legg'd lummox into the Queen
Of the Starlight Ballroom in a day.
So, after a time, the bear's behind
Would hit the floor.
He'd sit there, grin as only bears can do,
As if to say, "You silly boy,
Don't you know that bears can't dance?"
Then, just as the bear had started to try
Once more, one last time--
Then, suddenly, a great quake struck.
The earth's plates shivered, then shifted,
Ever so slowly pushed and lifted
The great metropolitan load,
Just as the bear had started
His ritual dance:
Not Stravinsky's sublimely frenzied
Rite of Spring, but the Russian Bear's
Triumph in Petrouchka, when he steals
The crowd's attention at the fair.
Just then, the earth began its own
Slow, lumbering dance beneath his feet:
Round and round their world began to spin.
Endlessly rumbling and groaning, it split in two:
Nadir, and
Zenith, an
Ominous gulf yawning in the In-Between.
II
At first, the bear simply began to move
To keep his balance,
One step, then another, obedient to the earth's
Insistent sway.
Suddenly his bear's heart realized
That he was dancing.
Grinning his stupid grin, he turned, forgetting
The spinning world.
But grin gave way to terror as he turned
Around again.
The vortex edge on which his trainer danced
Had split away
And, spinning now at slightly different speeds,
Bear and mate
Were torn apart.
Confused, frightened, alone,
The bear danced on,
His feet afraid to stop,
Afraid that he might sink to the yawning edge
And slip away to nothingness.
But soon the dance itself
Became his art.
Viewing from outside,
No eye could guess
The bruin's inner state,
No lip would call
This lumbering gait a dance.
But a dancing bear knows what he is,
His inner dance has grace and poise
Because it is a gift of love,
A stinging cry of loss
For one who said,
"Left by itself, the heart
Teaches the dancer breadth and form."
Our broken world spins but one way
Our future is a tale
Of overlapping continental plates,
Of pressures pushing inward, outward, forward.
We merely dance to keep our balance,
Dance to rescue meaning
From the void.
III
Dance, dance, growling, great,
Dance the moon.
Dance, dance, force your heart,
Beat the time
With the loon.
Dance, dance, dance the quake,
Beat it down.
Dance, dance, not too quick
Beat the time
With the clown.
Dance, dance, never stop,
Do your part:
Dance, dance, while you weep
Beat the time
With your heart.
Dance on, great bear!
Dance on, bear-master!
Live in dance upon the rim,
The cutting edge,
The iris of the eye of God.
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THE VEIL OF TEARS
Tears are but the beaten heart's rendition
Of frosty windowpanes, that, on a winter's
Morning, crystallize, forming by chance
Strange shapes, as clouds do on a fleecy day.
Redundant tears well beneath my eyes,
Even as I pray, or write this hymn.
Nowhere do I see the solid form which
Zephyrus alone can bring to the East
Over Asian deserts, to the rising sun,
As a child, I learned to pray to Mary,
"Pity us, mourning in this vale of tears."
Learning the prayer by rote, I thought this world
A veil of tears from which we peered at bliss.
Behold, the child's natural mistake,
Now become my daily point of view.
Yet, even as I peer out through the veil,
The darkened skies seem live with glistening stars.
So bright, serene! I now can see Van Gogh,
Vibrating, too, inside his veil of tears
While painting in his starry, starry nights.
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THE EYE OF GOD
The eye is called the window of
The Soul. Through human eyes
We learn to love the soul we see
Beyond the face which tries
To speak its soul, but fails and trips
in lies.
What, then, might be revealed to those
Who dare with love's first blush
To gaze within the veil of tears,
To sight within the hush
The eye of God, whirling o'er the rush?
* * * * *
Over the narrowing, gray abyss,
Hovers the eye of God.
On wings of ice, attendant sprites
Flit in praise to prod
The progress of the stately eye of God.
Brightly hued, dazzling points,
Like tight-reined horses, prance
In place upon the rim. Among
The rubies, sapphires, in trance,
Pearl and Garnet lead the jewel-lit dance.
They step and sway in ecstasy.
The power straining bright.
Each point unique, but forming part
Of spinning wheels of light
That nullify the graying, cringing night:
The eye that spins outside of time
Preparing all to end
Swallowed by all-consuming love,
Whose cycles spawn and rend
Fragile dream-birds, fated, too, to end.
Receive my love, O whirling, jewel-flecked
Eye, and heal its ills,
Nullify the lack that numbs.
Zero, negated, fills:
Overflowing, finally it spills
Into
the center
Where
all will meet,
Into
the mind of God.
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