by Paul Blackburn
That man,
this man, never
satisfied
is almost enough.
The sense, the half-sense of his
of any man’s incorruptible loneliness
incorrigible and terrified,
should be enough
to cave society in
his need and ours.
What’s melancholy is the most abstract.
Yet skip it back
seven centuries,
that same centrifugal leaves a sediment
whose taste is sweet
“when the light from the beloved’s room comes
to illuminate
the chamber of the lover, then
all the shadows are thrown back,
then he is filled and surfilled
with his peculiar pleasures,
the heavy thoughts, the languors.
And the lover will throw all the furniture out of the room,
everything,
that it may contain his beloved” That he may.
And Llull is taught what red is
“and what new vestments he shall put on,
what his arms are for
and what they shall embrace,
and how to lower his head to give the kiss”
which is good training for a lover.
But the beloved remains forever
far enough removed
and in a high place
as to be easily seen from a distance.
Which pride is unforgivable.
So you see where we stand, where you stood, Yeats?
And must it always lead to gods?
The man’s shadow dissolves in shadows.
Most men go down to obliteration
with the homeliest of remembrances.
( pride, avarice, lust, anger
gluttony, envy & sloth
What are the positive virtues
which come between a man and his world,
estrange his friends, seduce his wife,
emasculate his god and general manager in charge of
blow his earth up?
(down, sailor,
blow the man
coiled down there
in the dark pools of the mind, their time
they wait the violent lunatic wind
at the star’s dimming.
Dust, Yeats, all dust,
tho Llull remain a lover.
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