Tales of Darkness

Laments and Meditations

The Voice of Silenos - An Apostasy

   For so the satyr said it:
Mortals have the gift of knowing what they are
only as they come to the final truth of it, and so cease to be -
For Immortals it can never be so
and their Power must strive survive it;
They must always brace, endure, while living out
their endless Fate.

 meaning
   that when we set to wreak as gods
   we only find out the consequence
   once our doing of it's long-made
   and our own lives long-done

Those who'd put their hand
to toil the world with Destiny
must share the gods' Dominion
without the energy of their Curse
and the Wisdom of their hidden Mind.
For this, they will be seared by the holiest
Fire, without dignity of a Sacrifice.

   and Agamemnon saw it too:
Heaven makes it so -
that Man must grieve out his years
as punishment for the Gift that gods cannot ever share
   and bitterly despise and envy
to let Death bring pain, to bring agony and hate
and so foil the bright hearts of men, the strong love of women.
Cassandra died for this, for daring to speak the horrid truth:
nothing of her will or soul was fault for all her loss,
she was but victim of a jealous god, and of pride, and of mortal loins;
a lamb brought home to slaughter by a spiteful queen,
   a sacrifice to abomination and to lust.
She died seeing all this made so, and so became it knowing . . .
. . . but when Clytemnestra drew her dagger last
did she dare stare deep into the steady eyes
of the king, her lord, her once-trusting lover?

   The satyr laughed, and ran away,
   leaving only a taunt of bitter truth,
   a tune played madly in the twilight woods
   birches whistling with the rhythm of his hollow laugh
   like some fever in a lovers' restive dream
   swept away by a morning breeze
   before its substance can be touched.

And like did Plato seek to lead souls' eyes away
with logics spun of mortal words, and planned out the city
of a land and time when poets must fear to tread
for curse of death or madness, lit by the hellish light
that casts the cave-drawn shadow he claims
is all our knowledge of the world can ever be.
He dared deny our bodies and our souls converge,
or might seek deeds to outlast our flesh
and create a Life that needs no secret Flame,
that can breathe without the burden of a God.

The Risk

I am broken open by new Truths
one face confronting self,
another contemplating love
and love's temptation,
a third made manifest all my history
all, in fourth, of Time in culmination.
Out of all this my task if forged -
to drop, to mold, to cast, to wield,
to live out the purpose of the age.

I would undo all masks, all crests,
unmake all armour of cold iron and fine jade,
but the Seal upon both heart and flesh
was cast by molten spirit and of freezing fire;
hammered by the cool rhythm of a beating's drum
shattered by the fury of the earth,
vulnerable by the curse of birth,
and the chains of home.

And so hearts cast about for lies
to conceal their humble making's fact
hard to put blunt and cold the Act
direct - this is the hardest thing,
to find the words to say
when they are needed to be said.

To break this seal, to defy the Ban
upon tongue and heart and voice . . .

I cast my lot into these times
diving forward into darkness
hurtling, hoping, testing faith
trying to learn from their confusion
trying to heal within the pain, the shadow of joy
a memory of that light that can burn the world
and is hewn of adamant and cinder,
water, wind, and earthly dust.

A Surfeit

I wonder oft of talents and their seeds.
I wonder of the skills that come unbid.
I wonder of the use and worth
of all our hopes and fears,
and spy the mystery of wonder's pass
before the wake of doing's deeds.
What crop, whose field, is this we till?
What is the harvest of our sea of dreams
from whence howls the hungry wind
that whips the golden wheat in waves?
Who feeds the beast that wears this yoke?
Who steers the plow that turns damp earth?

The season of our growing's age,
if aught's to reap ere our cycle's end.

(c. 1984)
 

To have spoken in the tongue of dreams, to have walked amidst the shadows of the nightmare world, shifting bright and dark, losing and loosing all trace of what others call identity, security, the calming chains of normalcy. And then to have silenced the inner voice, put out with tears and fire the eye for beauty and the feel for moment, the truth of power, to have sought too late a mortal love, the bonds of flesh and heritage, the siring of strong young brood, and to have thus wandered learning lessons unfit, forsaking ephmeral glories for a hope of conventional life. And then to have found through pain the loss of both these fates....

(c. 1988)

Unknowing

   The colours of memory
swarm on mountains within,
stars sparkling on cold lakes
long-distanced from waxing age
by the veils of waking times.

I am dry of beauty, of verse,
I am sore of high thought
and grand mood, the changing
times render me romantic,
yearning for unnamed lures;
I am struck out of any great
calling-up, powerless to yield
to the cynic's tarnished glories.

What scours me so
by the fire of young eyes?
What moves upon me
when near that naked strength?
What calls me
to the northland hills
when the moon is spring?
What drives my will?

In the middle of the working night
the search goes on for lack of end.
I dream of might-have-beens and should-nevers.
I feel the quailings of my foibles
plaint their futile cries of want.
I wonder if this world will end.

(Untitled)

Time and space, world and dream,
a billion untold realms
forever to defy all grammarye
and render all our eyes a-vain.
Great and Small, Ancient and Unborn:
the universe if fat with chance
on whatever fine a plane
a line of light may draw.

I am weary of your modern world:
take me to the stars that I may know anew
the raw senses of our frontier,
the rough beauty of the hands of God.
Chart me out a whirlwind's urge
to explore the outer wilderness,
where mountains spin 'neath other stars
and bright cities have not yet stained the night.
 

(1985)

Dies Irae

Throwing Stones In Glass Houses (Trope)
(Song of the Wheel I)

I knew a roaring wind,
   that shook the earth
   and rent the sky
I knew a golden darkness
   that could bend the strongest strength
   that could flaw the clearest crystal-ice
I knew a false virgin
   that sought unicorns for her keep
   that sacrificed a feast of fowl
      (a thousand lashes for her lust
      a hundred for her jealousy)
I knew a man of light
   kept notches on his heart
      as scores are cut into a gun
   turned his back on an open world
      as a coward from the wild, a refugee
      who did not have audacity enow
         to behold his own fears
   despite a self-turned eye
I knew a raging mist
   whose abandoned mortality
   returned with a vengeance
      upon its mortal weight
I knew a quiet hour
   when the sky was still and stopped
   when a penduled lantern
      clasped the cosmos in its swinging's grip
I knew a flood, a fire, a tower
I knew a song so primal
   so simple to be a-sneered
   so fiery to be a-feared
I knew a child, crying
   in the forests now
      crying
   for a never friend
      crying
         for a gentle word
         a soothing hand
I knew the dark of winter's bleak
   the sun and moon consumed
   the wolves fat, the woods deadly
I knew a giant's death
   and the twist of heaven's whim
   that swept that knowing away
      as was wrought
I knew a golden temple
   but the key is lost
   the way is broken
I knew a rainbow, and a dream
   that cannot be restored
   nor resought
I knew a mountain road
   that screamed and sobbed
   that gagged on dust
I knew a mortal yearning
   that yearned and yearned
I knew a splendid mouth
   that scowled at peace
   that snapped at tenderness
      that bit
I knew an icy crag
   that hoarded a vista, a mystery
I knew a pool of jade
   where the stars could not shine
I knew a chestnut tree
   that died, and left a twisted trunk
   and a scornful shadow, an eroded vale
I knew a high steppe
   where the east wind
      said no
I knew a western shore
   whales and waves calling earthly feet
   rocks and swamps nestling a dying soul
I knew a famine, and a plague
I knew a volcano's soul
I knew the sky's loins
I knew a grander dance
   than any word could tell
I knew a love
   that did not love
I knew a lust
   that craved worthless dust
I knew an empty garden, a barren plot
I knew a stone-ribbed palace
   where betrayal lurked
   to challenge life
I knew a green grass bed,
   a stony stream, cold
   a rocky gorge
      a sandy warmth
         where shoulders moved as one
I knew a carnal nonsense
   that left nothing more to say

Except a grief, that cannot be expunged.
 

Yes, life is indeed worth living!
Why, but why, then, do I starve?

The Shadow of Fools
(Song of the Wheel II)

Icy mane of snowy wind
hard are the hooves of deer, and kin.
Mountains range, wanderers strange -
here is the shadow a fool stepped in.

The cold snow blows
the high strings sing
white roses blossom winter
before summer comes green spring.

Years are past, and times are done
Names are gnashed, fire, water, run
sand and dust are the worlds of man
love and lust leave the mind, the land.

Can you hear the snow?
Can you see the wall?
The sky's wheel spins
   (the stars, light's fingertips
    out of the void, scraping our peaks,
    shining our seas)
the earth's wheel grinds
   (days rise and fall,
    beneath the sun's tether
    months wax, years wane,
    the moon hauls tide and weather)
an ox bellows from fatigue
straining, straining, at a broken cart.
The axle will not heal, when will the yoke
   (fear, lust, mistrust, disgust)
break
and the reins snap
   (hand frozen on the lash
    the driver dead amidst the storm)

Somehwere in the mountains ahead,
a horn blows a ringing canticle;
the snow shakes, ice shatters,
the ox, called, strains and strains.

Untrodden, unmarked,
snow and quiet forest;
a road disperses with winter,
a roamer roams the wild awhile.

(Aspen CO, Dec 30, 1981)

Surrender

The grey vistas of a city winter,
the dulling pain that halts my gait . . .
Without aim or source my days are passed,
estranged from labours fit for Cause.

Rhyme had chained me, Music both;
the grand rhapsody of meaning's curse
made me enemy to my most honest friends:
My Art is done, I am left with only Toil.

Cheap tales of robberye, hard lust,
quick thoughts, and feelings but half-cast
are all the Craft is called to now.
A wordsmith's living, without firm grasp.

Give chase, lay sweet a-bed, for love's
useless by name of true romance;
an explosion, a high fall, a kill:
all made entertainments for the market-square.

I am cast out, my gift impaled.
The hard street is no place for me,
but the wild mountains' gates are sealed, or ruin.
May God entrust me to a destiny.

In the taking of a tune
we learn to steal another's dream:
By the beating of that drum
the darkness stirs, our end is come.

The Subconscious

Metapause (a definition)

I myself have walked here: I am my own proof. The perceived world is often claimed to be a shadow, a bad copy. a reflection, or a total aberrance from or ignorance of the actual "true" universe. It is, of course, the one thing about which we know most about and forms the actual physical boundary to our awareness. Numberless, valueless, shapeless, we see the face of chaos before us. We ARE the face of chaos and its awareness of its self. What other could there be?

See! Reach and touch! This is the skin of being, the substance of awareness: this world is the shape of our mind, and the shape of our mind is our body: the world is our body.

Six Black Looks......

. . . . . I lost my sheaf, all I'd ever writ, on a day furious with moving and deep-cloying wonders, left perhaps on a strange car-hood, or in a house abandoned to a greedy landlord, or in the swirl of mindless thievery that was the trait of those I had fallen in with, and fallen to. But it is unmade, for I am no more what's wrote or sought by eloquence or arrestive turns of phrase: all now must be wrought anew, without foil of legacy of taint of inheritance (tarnished glories echoed by a fitful rage) grasping at what I have not, and can do no more . . . .

To write these days is to be thought a fool, dreaming in a public place when all that's matter is cold, hard, gold, all humour the profiency of skilled and wanton sex. "To write" - is that what thinking, feeling, striving is? A craft to gain applause or grants, and not a life lived bold, it seems, but shamelessly: Look, look herein and see my soul spin on its point, mock my honesty if you must (or will) for the weakness you think you know it to be. Tell lies about the truth and you will be set free - from all values, from real love, from the knowing of eternity - but you will have your pride, and have paid full price . . . .

Well-dressed but artless, this my home city in its sheltered bay. Is this my accursed Dublin or fevered Rome, are these rainy avenues the chambered crypts of my mortality's Golgotha, its subarctic beaches the cradle to my hunger? (Strike me when I say such things!) Tell me greatness is no more, that all the gods and all poesy are dead - does that make me wonder less, does it make my tears more false, my lautghter's happiness only cheap delusion, unless your judgment allows me breathe my own breath, choking on the spittle of my own lungs. You would chain my heart with the shortened bed of your own limitations, the small realm you take pomp in having courage to know and have conquered, to pass cold on all else beyond as without Cause or Meaning. Who taught you smile so mean? (as though you'd kicked a crying child . . . .) Are you my Mephistopheles, to teach me that to be damned is to have been saved?

Is it only you believe, you know, you hope, that you will free yourself from hell by tainting innocents with the contagion of your sins, laughing as they fail beneath the weight of your corruption, giddying their faith and surety with the insubstantiality of your lust?

Fire has a name, and light is its shadow. Ashes all lies shall be in the gale of destiny, even as poetry is but chaff upon dear heaven's wind - bare husks of vital knowings reaped from the grain of God and Nature; the flames of time shall consume untruth, all evil wrought shall be burned away. Bitterest to oneself in such a storm is cruel laughter, borne of hatred, your own tongue a-cindered when the fire comes at last.

There must be gods to have sanctioned sentiment for beauty (and susceptibility to pain) as mere pitiful insanity. There is no human eye alive could recognize the value of a poet's curse, or save or hoard the lost scribblings of a spited maniac distinguished in the bin from the tawdry refuse of these crassful times. I would tell you more, but all my reason's spoilt, and our destiny's already made.

To dare be what you are is to invite the surest barb, to risk exposure to the searing scorch of mortal gall, truth used as evil weapon, shot to hurt trust and stymie earnest toil. The world is wide, and the panoplies of time and fate hold wonders undreamt of, whose tales will never grace such small hearths as yours. Read me well, for I am only vessel of the age, mirror of your own anger, servant to your lovelessness, and anguish. I will hold your secrets no more, save to sharpen them for their hatching's day . . . .

Query (The Whips of Hell)

(1986?)