Month: April 2021

Agony and Ecstasy

The Castle West of the Moon has two marble sculptures:
One is Ecstasy of Saint Teresa and the other Laocoon,
The works of Art in the image of Perfect Form
As though the makers of such Art had seen it in a dream;

The divine ecstasy swept chaste Teresa in fiery passion
Tearing a thin veil of hidden desire beneath a cloak of faith
As Cupid’s Arrow of Desire thrust her heart in and out
And teased her with a recalcitrant paroxysm of ecstasy;
The eyes half-cast to the exhilaration of flowing streams
Of wanting, asking, giving, wanting it all in growing rapture
As the lips opened to the truth of the sensation she had denied.
How incredible Teresa’s devotion to God was wreathed in glory!

Whereby Laocoon, the Trojan priest of Neptune, stood in agony
Frozen in marble ice as the Serpents coiling his ribs and thighs
Towering in their divine glory that the gods bestowed upon the beasts
And his two young sons coming to aide in filial haste in pitiful vain
Watched their righteous father perished in punishment for the truth
Against his audacious enemies for Helen treading upon his beloved Troy.
Twice round their bodies the Serpents’ long and winding volumes rolled,
Twice round their breaths the Serpents’ insidious and portent venoms gushed,
The Father and Sons dissolved into one great monument of struggles for life
As the Serpents wreathed them with their mighty power in triumph.

The Queen of the Castle looked at the marvelous wonders of Art
In a surge of indomitable compassion for Laocoon and his Sons
For the painful death was beyond the reason of justice and sense
Even though it mattered gods, and gods and God were selfish always,
Whereby Teresa’s Ecstasy was deliciously dreamy in a sweet delirium
Glistening like dewdrops reflecting a rainbow on the gossamer cobweb.

grave of the fireflies

I remember when they were happy,

I remember when they were lonely.

When only two of them left, there

I saw the light glowing and growing

in the silence of darkness of night

Frolicking in the twinkling starlight

Becoming two fireflies on the grave.

Seashells

She wished her dreams secretly
Sitting on the rock by the shore
Lest the spirits tear them anon
And keep her a hostage to fortune
Until her spirit left her in surrender
To the mercenaries of death in the pact.

Luck was a stranger, so was Faith.
But Hope always stayed with her
On the rock against winds and waves
As a Friend like Pellas and Athena
giving the light of Hope to Despondence
reviving Breath of Reason to wait still.

One day Hope told her to write a letter
To Heaven about her Seven Wishes
So that the West Wind would carry it
On his feathered wings like Pegasus’
To the Palace of King direct and express
And He would open and read it at once.

So she wrote her letter to King
Of Seven Wishes sealed in secret
Stood and flew a lithe kite carrying
The wishes in words fluttering in the breeze
And waited for the West Wind to come
And deliver them upward further higher

Alas! The Wishes sent to the skies
Fell from the wings of the wind,
As her heart’s whispers were wafted
Downward, leeward, seaward
Until mermaids caught in their outing
And treasured them in the shells.