Sights From Below

The exalted ironies of my suspect recession,

do serve to ennoble the tittering frame

that houses infinite sovereignty, in chains of repression

the all too solid coils that my grave eyes

work round and with due solemnity

strap fast to the vagaries of social grace--

In moments ennobled, that din and murmur

does not figure,

but whatever the ecstasy

I am bounded to the earth

and to troubles insincere and meddling,

the blights of soot that mar the dove

even as he never deigns to touch ground

for the very air is suffused

with dissipation and soot.

Oh, that these chanced objects,

sights of our rhetorical memory,

would sway so headily over our loves

that we, symbol for symbol,

would edify the scenes of our annunciation

with Pardoner's relics

and dubious keepsakes

and tossed idealizations--

For isn't it true

I'll ask your assent directly:

Haven't waxen wings made for shallow flights?

The 1st of March

It is the first of March

I have had my day

in sullen, mottled economy

of mind - nothing do I say

but of auguries untrue

as might spit the embittered sphinx

that Oedipus wrought with the rue

that all chastn'd riddlers do feel

at being sounded like a bell

without a muffle to deaden the peal

So long is wisdom kept

interred in the furnace of our breast

(spewing fallow seedlings

that threaten always to molest

my impatient autonomy)

that I work upon more salient matter,

as would in my hands abide, --

O, careless freedom,

why do you me chide?

Asceticism

One must always be suspicious of ascetics who have never tried to be aesthetes. 

Theology

Theology would be among the most fascinating fields of study if what it studied actually did exist. As it stands, it is but a sandbox for rhetoricians – a sandbox that is taken very, very seriously by the children playing in it.