Seattle Small Books Company

On Ancient Paths

Joins Art to Artist in their double sorwe,

For he would be the Pilgrim

In Beauty’s wanton lap—

That Beauty, whose beauty

Cannot be scorched by trial, nor truth.

The music which falls from his harp

Would charm Euridice from the Plutocracy,

Did charm the Irish sorceress,

For he would be Musagetes

To Calliope.

Deep within the interlunar cycles

Of the Creative Will,

Hidden in the Intellect,

There lies buried the never-written,

Epochal, ur-poem; the tripod

And the crucible stand ready—

Forcep and tong also—

To lead the infant poem,

From the dark to the light.

The forge lies ready

To transform the lead to silver

And then to gold:

The Magus breathes life

Into his roric figures;

If the Fool in his most lyrical

Murmurations

Could produce such hieroglyphery

At such preterdetermined intervals,

Could evoke such Romantic Torments

(Unnamed, yet certainly rhymed,

And hourly metered,

And Behemothmically paginated),