Grief has taught me,

what joy could never

reveal,

the severity,

serenity,

and sovereignty,

of Love.

---

And where it is joy

we desperately seek,

and deem thereon

aside from Love

no higher value

can be obtained,

always the same end

to Love befalls on

this earthly plane,

and rooted in it

the greatest of sorrows

are contained.

When everything is said of ‘what is there’

and the seminal meanings teased out of

juxtapositions: the more a thing is perceived,

less of it is seen, the more it is contemplated,

less of it is felt,

the more it is understood, the less it exists.

The hammer in the mind breaks down reality,

the hammer in the hand breaks down matter,

the hammer in the soul breaks down that which

stands in opposition,

and drives the nails into the hand of God.

Shrouding racked bones

in a mantle of black years

he, shed of vanity,

raising no cry against fate,

finding no rose renewed,-

just old man

bent over the chaos

of his fitful shadow,

struggles to counter

the weight of gravity,

heavily leaning,

his cane tapping

unsteadily against

the pitted glaze of stones.

---

From eyebrows furled

into storm clouds

and a keen eye brazed

on black heaven,

a few jagged thoughts

still ravel to earth

inventing his  last

green dragon world

from illuminations

gathered lifelong,

held in evidence against

a legacy buried in ash,

discarded notions left at the foot

of weathered battlements.

---

Slowly descending

westward to the gate,

having found no redemption

among men,

he, pitching forward

perilously on blocks

of detached, blown out steps,

slips into low shadows

near the outer wall,

merges into darkness.

Angels standing in the sun

raise no cry against fate;

he is soon gone, countenance freed

to breathe in Elysium.

The moon’s silver crescent

transects the ram’s horn

above the valley floor,

deflects endlessly

sifting enigmas

that bury our thoughts

in the migration of stars

across the black

marbled night.

---

Pillars of stone lit

in a vast whirling

cylinder of blue

and white sky crystals

distend in firelight

and water dance,

contest the weight

of the horizon

against our awakening

presence of mind.

---

Surrounded by the

foundations of eternity

and stars laced together

by our mythologies,

we dream lucidly

in the newness of time

and enter the fluidity

of the desert kohol night.

Foundering in a sea of shimmering grass,

hidden deep in featureless terrain,

washed out in mist and distance

on the frost-wine streaked prairie,

they hold fast to their covenant,

communing under the vigilance

of migrating stars in the perimeter-less

autumnal remnant bronze bramble.

Heavy, wind-bent, resilient seed-heads

of Cone Flower, Blazing Star, Blue Gamma,

and Indian Blanket, all grinding down

on their slender stems, turn in the wind

waiting to release their burden

to God’s providence.

These are sacred objects of the day.

I.   The Writing of the Hidden Room

The hieroglyphs of scorpions

trail in the sand, conjugating

with the long lazing sibilance

of the viper’s scrawl

across rippling dunes, these-

dooms of nature written

on declending tablets of silica

soon swept over in

an instant of wind

on the red high horizon.

---

The tongue in my mouth

is a withered leaf.

The sun slants by

drawn on a skein

of jackal grins

across the absinthe sky.

---

Risen from hidden words,

in sky’s chamber tooled,

turned and fluted

in the rose engine,

timeless stems of rock

stand watchman on                        

the outer walls of time.

Under the silver horn of moon

the lotus reveals

the jewel of the day’s endurance.

---

Below the springs of Djed Weron

amidst broken crates,

pitched vessels and gutted sacks,

a few faceted stones drift overlooked

into the cooling sands

agate, chalcedony, jasper,

delved from dark arteries

in the waterless wastes

mother of pearl and mussel shell.

---

Brought to this ruin,

having divined an errant star,

I have relinquished my body,

left lank upon the ground,

to the priesthood of vultures.

A damascene blade pivots loosely

in my ribs catching the dessicate sun.

So is this commerce ended

and my last curses uttered.

---

In the month of Shomu

I ascended the Nile in flood,

the flax and the barley were ruined;

the river swelled with the moon.

By decree, the storehouses

were opened and abundance

flowed out from the holy cities

to the shrill of pipe and rap of drum.

---

I poured the heavy fragrant

oil on the rounded offering stone,

which my grandfather

retrieved from the waters

of the Nile’s heart at El Derr.

On the eve I marked the ascension

of the Goddess onto the rim of Orient,

traversing steadfast above the brown

rushing soul of the River.

---

II.  The Book of Gates.

---

The Ox and the Oak

turn up the soil,

clay hardens in the sun

and wax melts away.

Shadows fall to earth and  grow

beyond root and leaf

onto the temple gate.

---

When I was ill with fever

as a child,

my father placed a basin

by the window,

allowing the sun’s

reflection to dance

onto  the ceiling

above my pallet.

---

Time is a span between

dreams, dry dust,

and the incessant rustling

in the reed beds

of Green Egypt.

Under the luminous arc of sun

the lotus weaves its perfume

into the memory of the day.

---

In the red land,

amidst stones immaculate,

pounds the sundering blue

of sky on the mind

like a generating ocean.

---

Brine salt eyes sink back into

a nest of blue flies

heaped like berries

in the yellow wafer

thin flask of skull

dead estuaries in the melon

light of the Nubian desert.

---

The bolt is drawn back,

now seeing is not vision,

but persistence

rooted in hidden words

established in the fountain

of the Going Forth…

I went up from the nome of Thiis

upon the Oasis road;

shadows fell long and lost

into infinite solitudes.

---

Persistence forces a

quell of dreams

to flow like crystal

loosened from its frame.

---

III.   Standing beneath the beam

---

The spider has set its net

across the door of my house.

Sweet scented labdanum

burns there no more

curling violet dark with smoke

in my hall.

The fig and date have dropped

their fruit on the courtyard tiles

ungathered to purse

in the sun’s viscid meridian.

---

No more does fire light scatter

its tangled musings

on the silver ceiling beams

no more does the shudder of the lute

pierce these red pillared halls.

How changed

this house is now;

while ambition ran through

flesh and bone,

and no weariness hindered the day

to establish a lasting name,

now anguish runs through

stem and stone for the

barrenness of this failed house.

---

I came up from the nome of Thiis

upon the Oasis Road,

emptiness beyond me,

and the howl of souls mounting

in the wells of the dispossessed.

Silence ravels ragged

at the edges of the soul,

lacing there with shadows

in the blessed spaces beyond

the edge of the cultivation.

---

IV.   The Pathways of Re

---

The eyes of Sothis

dance wetly between the reeds.

Amber and flowing,

tensioned against

the force of the current,

her glistening flanks

flood in rushing ichor,

proffer hints of smooth sepia.

Sun exuded luxuriant oil

anoints her matchless form,

the Ibis spread it’s wings

like a tan cloth around her.

---

At the banks of the great flowing Pulse,

deep in the salt laced thicket,

I caught the scent of her

cinnamon skin lingering

in the cool marrow of shadow.

In heavy leaning colonnades,

in the closeness of dark presences

I braced the drink of oblivion,

This, the inheritance of men

in the midst of Greater Beings.

Where the mortal fades away,

Cleansed is Re in the Field of Rushes.

Disconsolate, restless is the sea.

Gathering hidden strength,

dark-brooding Proteus,

abiding not the immovable,

assails his bounds,

pulls down the walls of creation

into his primal dark realm

grain by intractable grain.

---

Breakers rumble in the cove

beyond a shirr of cypress

staggering down to white surf.

Cormorants scud the air,

mark the temporal slate

with sweeping arches;

tenuous inhabitants

in a tear of veils, burnt in time.

---

Grey moon, auburn sun

locked in contentious years,

divide these headlands,

send leaden cylinders

incessantly onto the battered cape

while all is being irretrievably swept 

beneath the plane of the ecliptic

towards distant unknown shores.

---

On this savage blade of land

eternity itself is wearing away

under the dominion

of unattainable spheres,

driven by indifferent

and relentless momentum

until the last stars rain down

in the waste hells of time.