Untitled [To see this evil from its core]

To see this evil from its core
He spent himself on margins
Crystal edges umbra-ed and broke,
Splintering by measured denials,
Waiting for the hour patience intersected:
The giver capsuled whole the spending parts.

O Mad Love where untempered
You remain, tunneling trains of art—
Deflecting horizonless
		depthless

Light
         on this voice—these sounds—
A heart whose wails you dream
Into actuality swims halfway
To your always perilous obliqued and
Always
          vanished
                        shore.

From Tau by Philip Lamantia. Copyright © 2008 by Philip Lamantia. Used by permission of City Lights Publishers. All rights reserved.