(Beauty is truth . . .)
A strange residue of silence
precipitated by climactic encounters
poisoned his romantic notions
the way weapons of chemical warfare
kill cancerous tumors
draining energy from cardinal organs.
He looked at her lying
naked, sleeping,
her mouth agape
he replayed the scenes
and gradually
they transformed him.
The banquet of intimacy progressed
from naked pencil marks of a cupiscent mind
to golden nude portraits glowing . . .
not a fabulous posterior to grab at the hips
no idealizations described with cliche,
just clear sensations
revealed by light and curve,
a perfect body perfectly concrete
infinite and insubstantial
touched with eyes, hands, and lips
responsive at every point of contact
every overlap of otherness
exploring itself.
The undulations of language
washed him, washed over
him, in situations and events
like beads in a double-knotted mala,
mantras, seed sounds,
an orderly germination,
rhythms from every season,
like spirits walking by chance
attaching themselves loosely to objects and powers
symbols and vibrations,
their feet know lightness
they make marks as in wet cement
the stone books of our age
the statues of Ozymandias that will yet crumble to dust,
and the song those children sing: The nectar of the gods
is vinegar,
Your life is written with a broomstick in the sand,
the tide is coming soon.
Sweet small deaths,
trembling in the candle light,
the curves, the whispers,
the erotic wake.
Almost everyday he thinks to himself
“Poor Keats . . . poor everyone . . .
Truth does not exist---
there is only poetry . . .
our only shelter,
the only thing to stand in,
nude, naked,
comprehensively exposed.”
Appendix:
“It is no wonder that when therapies strip man down to his naked aloneness, to the real nature of experience and the problem of life, they slip into some kind of metaphysic of power and justification from beyond.” –Ernest Becker