Lord of the Poets

I.
Whose voice squares prime
To fire’s heaping slag
As to every blanched root sunk
In bitter cavern
Every purple blossom on the vine?

Whose utterance is gate
to pattern and process---
both emblem and archetype
of Three Worlds:
Angelic, material and divine?

Cluttered tongues
Speak of matter’s supremacy
in unbreakable laws of energy.
He wields confounding phrases,
so steeped in beauty, as to render the perfect cup of understanding;
Each word a mountain or an ant,
Poplar leaf clattering
Or slab of striate shale potent with heat.

Whose eloquence bespeaks eons
And strides generations
Of literary brilliance
In parable and formulae;
As reactive in nuclear and atomic power
As the perky flight of the bumblebee?

The Lord of the Poets
greets the quick who serve him
with giant ears like elephant palms
Shimmering lines
Wave the breeze
Of Creation’s dew
In a thousand-armed tentacled embrace---
Understanding more than a little of Nature’s scripts.

For to feel is in some sense to know.



II.
When I am exasperate, dangling at the limit of speech
Not knowing how to articulate this pink stone---
He gives forth new words
And shows
This brick pounded, fire heaved,
razor-sharp to touch treasure
to my astounded eye.

Elemental speech
Awakens sense.
Uplifts heart,
magnifies soul.
Can joy be so contained?

A hand dips a stream
By the side of the rail where chunks of coal throw off.

The double green valley grasps
the setting torch of sun
Reflecting a peach light
On dusty porch windows
Melting this
day,
And all of my liquid, Summer days into one---
One very good Carousel day.

How long the poet will sing I cannot tell.
Or how he goes on singing even now---
For who can describe
words scratched into sand while accusers flee?
(“Where are your accusers now?”)
Who can tell me how long the stellar light falls to flicker in the freckled surf?
Or measure length and meaning of alphabets stretched to the sun?



III.
Lord of Poetry,
First Lord,
Word and tamer of the Seas,
Word spoken (over elemental water and void).
Eternal word;
Lily of the Field,
Bread and water of life.

You give power to become
Sons of God
And mighty Sons of Thunder.
You dissolve the Deceiver’s desert logic
In three breaths.

Poetic Lord
You command pounding thunder
In language full with authority,

Before this all other discourse is powder and branch set to fire.