Big with Dawn

Yesterday: me, a stone, the river,
a bottle of Jack, the clouds
with unusual speed crept by.

A man was in the middle of me.
I was humbled.
Not by him. The earth,

with its unusual speed,
went from dawn to dusk to dawn.
Just like that. The light

every shade of gold. Gold. I’m
greedy for it. Light is my currency.
I am big with dawn. So hot & so

pregnant with the fire I stole.
By pregnant I mean everything
you see is of me. Daylight

is my daughter. Dusk, my lover’s
post-pleasure face. And the night?
Well. Look up.

Are you ever really alone?

Related Poems

The Silent Camp

In heaven, a pale uncertain star,
    Through sullen vapour peeps,
On earth, extended wide and far,
In all the symmetry of war,
    A weary army sleeps.

The heavy-hearted pall of night
    Obliterates the lines,
Save where a dying camp-fire’s light
Leaps up and flares, a moment bright,
    Then once again declines.

Black, solemn peace is brooding low,
    Peace, still unbroken, when
There comes a sound, an ebb and flow—
The steady breathing, deep and slow,
    Of half-a-million men.

The pregnant dawn is drawing nigh,
    The dawn of power or pain;
But now, beneath the mournful sky,
In sleep’s maternal arms they lie
    Like children once again. 

An Eternity

There is no dusk to be,
   There is no dawn that was,
Only there's now, and now,
   And the wind in the grass.

Days I remember of
   Now in my heart, are now;
Days that I dream will bloom
   White peach bough.

Dying shall never be
   Now in the windy grass;
Now under shooken leaves
   Death never was.

Apology of Genius

Ostracized as we are with God—
         The watchers of the civilized wastes
         reverse their signals on our track

         Lepers of the moon 
         all magically diseased
         we come among you
         innocent
         of our luminous sores

         unknowing
         how perturbing lights
         our spirit
         on the passion of Man
         until you turn on us your smooth fool’s faces
         like buttocks bared in aboriginal mockeries

         We are the sacerdotal clowns
         who feed upon the wind and stars
         and pulverous pastures of poverty

         Our wills are formed 
         by curious disciplines
         beyond your laws

         You may give birth to us
         or marry us
         the changes of your flesh
         are not our destiny—

         The cuirass of the soul
         still shines—
         And we are unaware
         if you confuse
         such brief
         corrosion with possession

         In the raw caverns of the Increate
         we forge the dusk of Chaos
         to that imperious jewellery of the Universe
                —the Beautiful—

         While to your eyes
                   A delicate crop
         of criminal mystic immortels
         stands to the censor’s scythe.