The Ghent Review Volume1, Number 1, summer 2016 | Page 17

hence shadows dark and deep
(o who will sing the deeper dark?)
(and does the light originate there with darkness round a star rendering it visible?)
I have seen
have seen and heard and heard also the swan’s lonesome cry
and known that the dark and light embrace each other constantly
of which I am a believer
(this heritage embraces all things even unto imagining history as a visible
transcript ripe for transposition)
all this like the ever-lasting core of a Greek play pertinent to our time
a flame which indicates a fire
the light and the dark also
rouse!
rouse the flame!
nor a temporal admonishment satisfy us in our working days
nor only the moon be our witness
though we have witnessed the moon
do flame and mill conspire against or with us
are we within the maze without a thread
or do we spin from our guts the means of escape
who are intruder and Minotaur alike?
source-domain
out of which a chorus whispers its lauds and laments
through the vine we pluck our fruit from
and the over-shadowing sky overshadowing us as we sing
“O Icarus I see you ascending
O Icarus I see you fall”
and if we do not sing who will?
so come
let us harvest the sun and the moon
flame-roused as we are by their brightness
flame-roused as El Greco was in the storm above Toledo
city I have walked in
down cobble streets that might be hometown cast in southern light
his figures and dreams before me
a reality equal to any which might be cast against it
a testament to the light which spun it