MIMESIS

Silence touches me.

Its hands are neither warm nor cold
running dimply upon the chalky

snow, or winging it sombrous over Th'Dust
numb blond                 

--Interval of Song:  

                    Th'wee
& tiny wonders dying dumbly by the sight
of th'bloodless Pip & Emma where they wander

through th'toneless, timeless &
lackluster--Interval of Silence:

While in the balance blow the designs of
th'brush mosaic of all marvels & numb

sucking up mirror-images out of The
Whole & None! showering pastiches

from its Grave ditches, in a
tapestry of transparent likenesses: Song

touches me: Its hands are

neither true nor false, walking argent over the
benighted sable of our washed-out pale, or

floating a marble dun (white with wonder)
above the murky black blazes of the pitchy Grave

& dusky as a raven lurid & pasty
as it fades down wan & toneless into the faint-

ness: Interval of Silence: choking
th'throats of th'birds (all) forgives
my blasphemy              

       ... reading deep stares
amongst th'libraries of lilac looks
sculptured a strain upon Th'Neutral achromic

sails: Something! into our conversation
O, over our heads (leading us into The
Astonished ecstasy              

  ... nightfallen & dayrisen: What
do the children persisting into th'rain

know? following Dawn up with their vespers they tear
away the droplets of the Divine Light
even before they can christen th'ground of Dust
dull & silent) in The Interval
of Song: pigeons attack the innocent horizon

... launching their vertical Ascendancy above
the Prophecy of relief over all the clouds

while The Enormous Architectures of Music
arc marmoreal the jet horizon so humiliated

under the Grace: Hidden blood turns to
Gold! incarnadined, indelible, all-flushed with

humanity, yet fadeless, & from sapped with Th'Cold
almost to imbued with life's warmness in

the Interval (of Silence) awaken
th'colorless voices of the breezes, dull & dim, in

th'tragic trying to bring back Th'Tinged
to the twilights,              

      --but The Day is done, and
Night reproaches us, so fine, & so re-

fined a point: Night falls around us desperate
and remote--How will we recognize Death
(apart from everything else we'll see)?

... All will seem the same: Meanings

won't so much seem meaningless as mean
Everything --Shapes won't so much seem shapeless
as have th'same shape

... All strangers will have
Th'Same Look about them--Things won't (so much) lose
anything as... seem full of things

... while the winds of Th'Wildness
replace th'stark serenity with a disturbing calm

Night falls           

--Or, the Day arises?

... Who knows:        

Day, Night --All's One,

All's the same (seen from their
two opposite poles)

     ... Each's
the other's inner belly

(all th'While)'s intervals--Then
it is we will know

that we have seen everything
we came (here) to see