I.
To look upon the sky as early man, to stand
alone before unfathomable sights,
would be to see the night — lucid, divine —
and, prostrate before it, sense infinity;
or the infinite divide of sky and man that he beholds
before the mind constructs some anodyne mythology.
II.
But gone is such naïve alacrity; that gaze
which views the moon with wonder is disabused
by time and minds inclined to wander.
Knowledge is itself a castigation; the magician who reveals
his tricks reveals the fallacy of magic. The imagination
atrophies: God evanesces to a shadowed form, unreal,
and shatters the stained-glass effigy of meaning.
III.
Darkness of day’s end stretches inward from the window,
edges further, devising shadows
that define the very substance of a human soul;
light circumscribing stretched parameters of empathy:
IV.
My comrades — victims of earth’s tilt —
I am apostle to this grey November sky,
which dims midafternoon such that the sun
is but a brief, acerbic lie
towards which we cast our petulant laments
against the withering of souls.
V.
Darkened heart shatters moon-wise and the shattered light
against the black infinity cripples the strongest man.
The Winter’s moonlessness descends upon frail prey:
prey of man’s heart who witnesses the flight of dusk.
VI.
I tell you: nothing can save you from darkness.
Neither the love that dangles ever in the distance
nor the job from which you come home at night
blank-faced, world-weary, and worn
will be effaced with morning.
VII.
When twilight creeps flowerlike, opening,
and blooms of darkness settle on the far horizon,
Time discloses its ambivalence
to the machinations of our burgeoning hive; this hive
of iron structures glistening, and smog —
of senseless, throbbing masses, ill-inclined.