Where I Sit Here Clad in Armour by the Stars

 

Where I sit here clad in armour by the stars,

I do not think of you; those thoughts are over.

Beneath the silver here is light enough,

To make me ponder by a lighter way.

Beyond the bronze óf our sun and the others

That haply rein the course of other moons,

In spiralled loops of other galaxies-

I deem that there is always life enough

To guide me, pondering, by another road.

 

As I leave the path of day the scattered remnants

Of the life left in ascension of the dusk

Lies still with me; there are no pasts, just ‘present':

No ‘future' is, but in this present place,

Spooled out distracted in the straits of ways

To live each second out. This will not matter

When I must pass, and past the uncaged hours

That Time rings out unending, in the place

Where love along with loss is lost uncaptured:

No dove or raven fit for symbol there.

It is not death, though, simply not life's essence

As we know it here, while here I do not die-

When I look up to catch the stars in stasis,

Which I do not think are arbiters of Fate:

Since, scattered far across, perhaps, by chance

To rain their influence through some secret burden

They are forged themselves of the same hidden purpose,

And expand and dance, by Will that moved them there.

 

This is not the reason why I choose to view them,

As they pass and glance, reborn to light my wavelengths:

Tuning me to reach past flesh and feeling,

As I reach through all the nobleness of night:

But just some strange desire to face my death soon,

By cancelling my thought with my sensation

By the meditative spheres, though this is action

And also is not dying. I had died young

When I in erstwhile paths, my sweet, could follow

The footsteps you've tracked past in all your glamour,

Not knowing that too could pass and now, alive,

I can choose without my choice to look alone here-

At the bridled footsteps of the heavy moon.

 

There are other cosmic entities past counting

In the grasp of no high god's transparent hands-

Beyond our wheels of fervour and redemption,

That fold back into this disk-shaped universe:

A convex disk pressed inwards in aeternum,

By the abstract bounding curve of Time and Space-

The first and final thought without thought's borders,

With no margins to its figure-eight shaped frames-

Where the nucleus of each one in refolding

Leads towards unfolding births of other realms.

And it is not quite loneliness to be alone there,

If I've left all, this night, to learn my self as shade,

When all that's left is only this strange spectre

Of the soul that only is, that wills to leave:

That does not turn to you this night and yearn here,

For the seconds this takes cost too many hours;

I am guided in my sails to some new harbour:

I am guided forth to walk another way.

 

                                  

 

There Space and Time will never be divided:

Here time has space that will divide us, now.

A ray up there rests still where it's resided:

We fly apart: you gaze from your own prow,

Upon the wordless ocean's higher crescents.

I fail to find you there: I know not how,

And so I seek those realms of nether Essence-

And find my fruit upon an uncaught bough.

 

I have no fear, from faiths slain by strange furies,

That used to tear my sleepless mind and soul-

Till slumber seemed with all celestial juries

To indict my savaged heart, to eat it whole.

Fate's emptied as my thoughts are now, of substance

That were fit to rend Dream's heart, though I believe

In nothing now but wintering of my indolence:

By which my griefs grow pale and fail to grieve.

 

And so I leave all hope for those whose moments

Are not brightest ere the morn breaks down the dark-

But who run through nigher life like crowds of cormorants

That see all ships cross paths and disembark:

Though we whose lives are shut before our slumber

Would set our ships unsailed, beyond the west,

Where no star dreams of worlds of hails or thunder:

Where no ships break, in harbours of our rest.

 

Be with me now, sun, stars and moons and planets;

I chart my course of sight where thought can see,

Though eyes fall short, sight sighs and plots its orbits

Beyond what falls, and charts each galaxy-

In tandem with the Primal Plan whose vision

Was not seen or thought before but breathes its path

Eternally, past blind worlds sans intermission,

In creation's eyes, past wheels of loves and wrath.

 

Somewhere deep above me is a sea-stray striding

Far over the cloudscapes of the midnight air;

Could it ever be you, what is the path you're riding?

And I fail to find you, yet I fail to care.

Yes, and can it be you? I feel your own soul shining:

For my own has left me, though I know not where;

And over these slide-lengths I can see you sliding,

Way over the moon's rest, where the sunsets steer.

 

On desert strands, on some strange still savannah,

Bring down your beams and let their light cascade

On cities hid from storms now, my Diana,

Towns left to gales that say their things must fade

By granite paths where man's ambition falters;

Under iron panoramas, where the shade

Holds faces lost to temples' desert altars,

We will turn with them; our dying cavalcade

 

Has left, for just the storm-path's outer reaches;

Shine your still ship, on towns that held decrees

For your sake once, their virgin, by the beaches

That forsake your name. From forth Elysian seas

Of blackness cast your crown down and be with us

Thru the months of summer birds, their brides the bees:

Thru the months of other moons whose pale coronas

Cross through what vaults, across what galaxies?

 

You lead me now, though now the route I move through

Sits as stilled as stagnant pools that rock no bloom;

Be still, I'll claim you though no man can prove you

As a guidance sought to stay the dice of doom.

There are more just like you, though your opal awnings

Ride mine this night, with all your star-bands high,

Yours since white childhood, since you were my own then,

Your flesh perennial, though a shade stand I.

 

Tilt silver on some bough that left no fragrance

In eons that sleep, where no minds commandeer

Dreams' flights, to bring them back their radiance

With scribes, that lit some Doric hemisphere;

Tilt down your knights whose white reflecting glory

Casts darkness on the nights that beat their breath

On boys, who dream, to tell an ancient story,

Of times whose lasting splendour is their death:

 

No straying paths in terms of Time unbroken,

And what is past is present though it's born to die.

Is there more to sight; our life is just a token

To the Primal Dance that makes these moments fly.

Is there more to know? All of my hopes bier-broken,

And the life below the stars an untaught lie:

And all I dream is of dead dreams yet woken,

As clouds reborn through some expanseless sky.

 

Ours is one of myriad lands that pass to fable;

Whatever texts men know that outlive stone

Won't outlive our earth: by some new tower of Babel

Cast your head to rest, slight kings, and pass your throne

To stars; God's heirs? No, deputies of metal-

One thing the death-born phoenix won't disdain

To reach towards, if earths peel, bough to petal:

Though all worlds are shade, beside the rippling rain.

 

All I've longed for gone, I'll watch instead the rainfall;

They are egoless, those dying diamond beads.

I would be with them, if just to hear the gale call,

And know that storm through sense with sense recedes:

For I feel it still, though this is no real wonder,

That though pains before sought pity by my verse,

I would lose my self by Jove's red heavy thunder-

Just to ride his weight, across this universe.

 

Great sphere that holds us here, deflecting comets

As though God held you to be His second sun,

Has your whirlpool eye forgotten all the orbits

That outlive all genius' eons: are you that one

That with mindless breath, with blindest stars eternal

In the sense we see their light where dead stars lie,

Shall outlast each fractured thought that comes diurnal

To my scattered eyes? I deem that I could die

 

And not know any thing of what surrounds you;

Yet I know, though Einstein vainly sought to know,

Why other depthless realms still lie beyond you;

I feel them thrive and fly, with every moment's throe.

All of matter scattered when a vacuum rises,

To estrange form's seed, though naught of matter die,

Is drawn out elsewhere still, through primal crises

That expand each void, through each expanding sky.

 

I have seen it all; I have no joy or grieving-

I have grieved for others, though this grief no more

Can move to you, my sweet: I watch you falling

Like a distant fire that lights a shrapnelled shore.

And I know You now, my moon, I hear you calling

Though You stand mute always in your moment's lore:

Though You strive at fire at last before the dawning,

Though I follow You, and watched You fall before.

 

I mourn for nothing's sake; I am departed

Past emotion's bounds now, I am gone away

To virginal sharp stars no wind has parted,

Not to grieve for night or dying light of day.

There are worlds on worlds here, and in their spirals

There are realms on realms, and we might see them all

Had we more than dust to outlive rocks and corals-

Through repeated lives to roost, and rise to fall.

 

Know nothing new can last - hence rise from mourning-

Know no thing on this light and dark world's floor

Can make your sorrow heavier than the morning,

In this pale-bright place past rocks you crossed before.

Across the scattered ash that marks the morning

There will come new birth pangs at the rise of dusk:

Of travails passed, to pass again, with yearning

That with death of sense becomes a tarnished husk.

 

With all envisioned things there is farewell now;

There's a blankness that my eyes can't go beyond,

Where lives all light, through folding, as a rainbow

Meets its mark and rises where its bow's points bend;

And now I know, though I had always known so,

In my store of thorns and hair of past men's garbs,

That those living by a wind by its thrust should follow:

Though predestined by a court of jesting orbs.

 

And now I know that, as a leaf may scatter,

As two points may meet in one I'll meet them there-

The shattered stars that mimic knight and jester-

That crown all kings and queens whose name is air;

And love and wrath alike are born and perish

With the frenzied aches that make one day's refrain:

And the peace beyond as pools no brooks replenish

But are outward spread, with ripples of the rain.

 

I could die this night and could go on without you,

All you orbs and suns, and would be no more dead

Than you have ever been, though still surrounds you

All the births you've blown, from storm's maidenhead.

I feel it is you, my moon, that turns me near you;

And I know it is you, I feel no hopes or dread,

To drift alone with stillness where the dark unwinds you,

To shed again your image where the dark is shed.

 

For I feel it is you, that yet must pass me onward:

And I know that it's you; by tides there keeps one frond

Of weed that passes by when night runs forward:

And I sail above you, since I go beyond.

 

 

 EDIT (by SDR) -