The Ghent Review Volume1, Number 1, summer 2016 | Page 37

the dullness and sluggishness of these days. So let my pride be arrogance
unto the meanness of this town – what do I care?
They cannot abide me and I will not abide here when on the waves of the sea
I will ride – see, I stride the dolphins of my desire. Young Angus to the
ancient town who will undo its culpability.
And today day zero of my calends.
Breaking all to remake all to the new delineations – see me, I am fire to old
wood. For I have become the gathering and the dispersal. Cauterising the
wounds of my soul - I am wounded but not grievously so. Nor maimed into
silence where the ways of words will gather about me to goodly ends.
And flocks of twittering sparrows in my hair.
The laurel leaves already about me and glistening in the sun.
So now must I instruct a Greek dilemma to their minds – which is my Greek
dilemma, and under what stone can I place my sword? Or enter the chapel
perilous with a smile on my mouth and a brash glance. Or draw it out of
stone according to the prophecy I will fulfil under this thunderous rain? (ye
gods of Greece I will accept no answer that is not my own)
See them, newly come to inquisit the air about them who do not yet flash in
the sun. That out of such formlessness I should form… - to kneel, perhaps,
but in what adoration or in kneeling to espouse the counter-prayer I yet
might impart as has been given me by those few warriors I treasure.
Taking from the store-house but adding to the store-house like some sly
prophet in the agora but not yet the proffered chalice to my lips. More to my
liking are these buds of summer as my symbol – and not Greek but solid
English as my weapon – sharpened on those stones (how the stones
themselves are sharp) like a causeway for those who are dispossessed of
weeds and roses (I am so dispossessed like one with the nudity of a god)