Abortive Attempts to Console Myself with Death

Another day is blowing through my nostrils.
This day shall die upon the stake.
A gleaming bucnh of hours; so much the nearer
The morning I do not awake.

The preachers tell me though my flesh is mortal
I am endowed with an immortal soul.
I know I have a brain. Amino acids
Decide what it shall think and set its goal.

And which of all my souls should be immortal?
Complacent me, when I am full and drunk?
Or lean and hungry me, when girls are lacking?
Or wildeyed, desperate me, in trouble sunk?

So fickle is my soul, now I'm alive
That it's absurd to think it could survive.

Some Hindus tell me to deny my body
And concentrate upon the inner light.
But in my body lies my only wisdom.,
Thoughts may be barren. Flesh is often right.

They tell me that my atoms are eternal
Some part of me shall live forevermore.
As worm or plant my body resurrected,
My brain turned sandgrains on some unknown shore.

But does the lily or the pebble know
That there is beauty in the falling snow?

"Just plant a tree or educate a son,
Or write a book. Your deeds survive your death."
But will the roots of any oak-tree run
Like shivers on my skin? Will fame bring breath?

"Be satisfied to be the single leaf
That falls in autumn on an endless lea.
The tree grows on." Well, if I were that leaf
I'd fell the tree did part and fall from me.

You say that our love shall last forever,
Like seas and mountains and the starry orbs.
I smile, but sadly. Our love is mortal.
For who, if not perverse, would kiss a corpse?

Still watching me lies like a snake
The morning I do not awake.

Sequel to the Previous Poem

I love your eyes. But they, like mine, shall burst.
The things you do. But some day all is done.
There shall be no more love to quench my thirst.
Nothing can help us more, when we are gone.

With our bodies our love shall die
And rotting in a narrow coffin lie.

All this we know, as our eyes betray.
We are alive. So we shall turn to dust.
Nothing can last. Plants grow but to decay.
As men and beasts have died, so die we must.

Time dripping through our hands. We seek to hold
It still, this very moment to enjoy.
But it is lost, and our blood turns cold.
We're chained to life that wants but to destroy.

But as the atom is a world itself
And as the glass reflects the greatest star
Our dewdroplife becomes eternal now.
In fleeing seconds timeless eons are.

When in the stream of life we both shall sail
Then our love shall be our only boat.
We shall not sink in any timebound gale
But moving onwards, we shall sail and float.

When we are Time ourselves, Time cannot bite.
We dance in fire, fly a timeborne kite.

Or I escape from time when in your eyes
I see reflections timeless as the sea.
My soul melts into yours, in silence dies.
My mind serene and still like stone or tree.

For time shall cease to be when we embrace
And stars shall stop their course in frozen space.

Estival Sonnet

Like parchment wings the leaves shall rattle - dry.
The dusty mountains wither and decay.
No cloud in sight. A blazing summer's sky
Makes me forget the palegreen hopes of May.

The land is conquered by the insects' hosts.
Their feet arre dry and tickle through the leaves.
The land's a sea of dust. I see no coasts.
An insect sea of death; no wave that heaves.

No sign of hopes. The heat repeats itself.
The fierce and blazing sun exhausts my mind.
My thoughts like dying sand on chalkwhite shelf.
Sun dazed my eyes. I seek, but cannot find.

My mind can but an endless tune repeat
Of you, despair, of insects' steps and heat.

Salamandrine Sonnet
 

This torrid loathsome stench of burning weeds
That filled my nostrils with a stifling smoke
Called to my mind a host of ancient deeds
And dormant memories to me awoke.

What do these vague sensations signify?
What runic message hidden in a haze?
This burning peacock's frightened jetblack eye.
My love, what set this sea of grass ablaze?

My brain dissolves itself in charcoal flakes
And leaves behind a nest of tangled snakes.

Rites

Through ancient Panic rites I now desire
To quell the partial, let the whole imbue
My frame and set my languid soul afire -
To melt into the world, melt into you.

You

I see a butterfly
Flutter by