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Shutter of Sparrows
From the provinces I sped
Beyond cannon shot and cacophonies of dread
Into vauntful skies of vaulted wind, which the Autumn's blessed
With the wild flourish of their hands.
Beneath a million leagues of saffron dawn
I heard the crescendo of lunar tides
Spitting primrose crystal bract
High against the bisque of emerald night.
Egyptian tongues of limestone
Talking time and space
To panoramas of breathless beach
Drunk on ripcurls of bleached azure.
& Life! still life! and still more I spied!
Feasts of exultant beasts !
Careening canyons of ivory and gold
That no daydream can hold.
Down the ebb of Heaven's aery dithering and flow
The breezes took me as I pleased. Beyond
Falls and ice-flecked domes of grand Yosemites,
Filling perpetual valleys to bursting.
I gathered the flavor of tropical fevers from far reaches of the divine sea.
Amber vistas, whitecaps, and waves of ember.
The pale spread of Sisal's sand. Grecian waters of Salambria.
Penetralia of ash and volcanic glass.
And baritone rivers of delta mud.
Echoes in the sun-red noon compelled me onwards, starboard
and illusive west,
In great melodies of wind
Our wistful wings bowed & interknit,
Like a tunic of reverie and restless blood.
And here I heard nightingales nestle in quiet forlorn
While owls screeched in nettles of astral glow.
& Beneath lush vines of French wine I learned
The face upon the moon until it seemed my own.
The sweet allegro of Alleghany plums, purple and yellow fleshed,
Nourished me again and so I leapt
From the Momiji red maple leaves of the Orient
To the Aztec sculpts of Coatepec.
And conspired with cosmonauts of old Atlantis.
And touched the neon-luminescent Palms of new-Pandora.
Beneath a fusion of heavenly twilight
My compass huffed corymbose and brine.
Cameos of marshes and supine plateaus
Become a memory against the loneliness of time.
To the left, a graduate monolith that no age can deny.
& Castles of air maneuver right, gargoyles of steel
Riposte and crack wide the welkin divide.
Halos of perfected light coroneting auroras of polar dusk.
I have seen viols of vesper attuned an impeccable hue
While Venus smiles interstellar blue.
I witnessed a violet smear of sky
Ring Spruce and Pine in violet fire,
And vast mezzanines of mazarine
Eclipse a cavalcade of green mountainsides.
And I think, O may I balance forever!
In the air's labyrinthine lap of ether,
Sustained with feathers,
Buoyant over fear & despair!
But how the winds turned on me then!
And pressed fists of thunderstorms into my breast!
Sunshowers and cyclones near broke me down to dust;
By pitch'd forks of lightning and lunatic squall
I was hurled against the strum of black sky
Whose siren song lulls new anatomies and old
To dally unto death in her miasmal whirlpool.
Fathomless eddies raged and overwhelmed!
Nervosities of purgatory which rend
With all the surge of Herakles
My strange heart, estranged completely
in the gloom and thrown
- thru the storm - and yet higher still,
Where fool Icarus dares the dream of waxen wings
& Breaks
Like the thousand fragments of my heart to earth again
&
Fades &
Descends
Back to meadows pure and familiar nests.
Back to the blinking of an eye,
Whose inception ever ascends
Into jubilant horizons of jeweled sky
From the dry land and silent heat
And a bed of small leaves
Breathing calm and quiet night.
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