I
The self’s the central torment. Samsara
And sin. Of course the sensual may support
Some sorrow, but not all, or else the heart
Leaping with love, compersion, joy and awe,
Were nothing good. No, flesh is not the flaw;
The flesh is sweet. It is the bitter pit,
The selfish kernel spurs the fruit to rot.
The pit is stone. The hardened heart may thaw
But not the crystal self whose facets show
Fun-house reflections in a glittering fête
To foil with a blackened mirror’s glow
An infinite, recursive, lonely set.
Dissolve the self, the ego deep within
And with it, suffering, samsara, and sin.
II
When love was young, a regent ruled for her
And gave ill counsel. He was jealousy,
He puffed-up love and said her subjects were
Her slaves, whose misery proved their loyalty.
She was by her own iron ruling harmed
Her naïve cruelty bent her, till her face
She saw within a glass and was disarmed,
And cast the false pretender from that place,
So sorrowful was she to see the wrong
He’d done through her, how twisted she had grown.
Now love ascendant, having suffered long,
Shakes her own palace, shatters her own throne
And joys in equity, which shall endure
Past pride, for love is love corrupted’s cure.
III
I see you where I know you used to cower,
Stalking distraught within the wings, the clean,
Incisive way you part the duvetyne,
And bloom into the spotlight in your hour.
Concurrently, your painted face aflower
Seems but to show a screen behind a screen,
(You knew life’s either seeing or being seen)
I had no shade. My countenance was sour
(I’m nothing if not honest) I was sick
With thoughts of you pressed up against some prick
Mid-act. While I am statue-stuck offstage
He’s holding you; you’re holding back a moan
I’m sure. My mind’s eye wouldn’t lie. I rage.
You were alone. I made you more alone.
IV
A ram of gold priked at a sullen stede
Who kept his wings furled with especiall scorn
He plodded, but from o’eruse would not heed
Direction, being weakened, bald and worn.
Yet algates had in him some feisty flame
And wise the ram, who knew t’would soar once more
If urged to batel by a bravesome dame
So prikéd hem to meet a burde of war.
Beneath a bower, in field of emeraude
They found her, sparring with a myrtel-tree
And up the stallion rearéd to be rode
By one so clearly set on victory
But then she cut his wings mid-air in pride
To fly herself, and they both fell and died.
V
The chestnuts pluck their sullen hides apart
Themselves. They dare to split the ringing rind
They, though fair settled in that prudent bind
Of comfort and defense, to fortune start.
(It must break others, that self-forming heart.)
I would be cruel then, stemming from my kind,
Emboldened by the thrill to leave behind.
In these brave spheres, my Amy, my Robsart,
Some needs must fall that others rightly rise,
Where shatter lowly shells excels the seed;
How they will welcome you in blesséd skies!
So both of us ascend within a deed
As natural as chestnuts! Don’t you see
Them glistening bronze as blood beneath the tree?
VI
There is no form, there is no recipe
No wind or wing to imp my wing upon
No single principle to fashion me
No pattern to the shifts I’ve undergone.
Sometimes, at width of pride and passion’s height,
I seem to rule (at least my small domain)
Sometimes love chastens me to kneel contrite,
Ecstatic with her love or with His pain,
Or meet her wrath and find Him absentee,
Or nurse my cares or beat my selfish heart
Or thrive in life, or live in fantasy,
Or suit a man, or dress a woman’s part,
And know not who I am or who to be
Between intemperate “I” and meager “me.”
VII
Psalm 84
I faint before your doorstep. Carry me
Over, Lord of hosts. As sparrows build
Their homes in human houses, I will flee
My nature, nesting in your altars. Shield
My sojourn, like the roof the clinging swallow
Trusts dust to. I will stake my hollow strength
On your prime strength. More whole am I to borrow
(Selah, where you o’erflow, I thirst at length)
Your peace than build my own. Where wilderness
Seemed endless, Bakkah gave your handmaid rest;
Let me not make my bed in wickedness.
But if I merit not to be your guest,
At least let me, in that unsettled state
Thy doorman be, or keep thy garden gate.
VIII
And I could stand without you. I could call
The moon the moon; a red, red rose, a rose
Find in my heart of heart only the dull,
Thick murmurs of its mouthing ventricles.
And I could moan your name and it mean nothing
But victory. With classical disdain
Could mete me moderation all exceeding.
What’s in a name? There’s nothing in a name.
A summer’s day without you is as sweet
And as without compare, without comparing
You to a summer’s day. And I create
While you but rest. And yet, what am I saying?
Though I may call my heart, my words, all mine,
You laid the scaffold. You frame the whole design.
IX
I’m blessed to share a loving sovereign’s bed,
to be the mistress of a gracious power,
to warm and sweeten where she rests her head,
to keep her council in the trying hour.
Her parliament’s two houses hear my case:
The one is love, the other empathy,
And innocent or guilty, her embrace,
At once imprisons me and sets me free.
Whether she learned this justice from above
Or through our simple human covenant
The only justice in the end is love,
Love teaches love. Love governs with consent.
And where I gladly groveled in my bliss,
You picked me up and crowned me with your kiss
X
I thought the old leviathan deceased,
The writhing din of poetry in me
With summer’s atrophy, the penned-in beast
Crabbed as an out-of-place apostrophe
Or starved, at least, in its archaic cave
But there’s a rhythmic tempo in the tide
And dancing, dazzling in the delphic wave,
New notions surface where the old subside
I feel a sudden stirring in the deep,
Fresh winds repair, fresh currents fair to chart
Breathe teeming life into my ocean heart
Yet what hook pulls my musing beast from sleep?
That dormant genius moves through your embrace,
To meet my moon in perigee, thy face.
AUSTIN DEWAR 