POETRY

  A Pygmalion's Conversion
			
		i.  desolation

  From the first Fear pitched purchase, pressed claim and caught,
  as fever claws with réd thirst, then red I wrought:
  smooth her liquid waist slake for my red-ribboned tear,
  plait her back bléssed requital's rippled snare,
  chisel-plunk and file-shush to steel óff
  stress against Your ardent rhythm's loss.
  When first Beauty whelmed me whole-over with the crush
  of want stripped, now from summer's shoulders' burning gush,
  now from music's slowness exuberantly abided, I racked
  my sculpted reply-wrench her coffered from the blue rock,
  threw off eidola that piled over, leant in and set
  this chapel to the rue of a self-reaving craft lét.
  Montresor, you serpent!  I am m_ own Montresor,
  routed with fear-fettled foul too rank to confess or
  bear.  And  my pitched purpose buys but guilt-claim,
  and the steeled stréss of burning catches but gall-flame.

	    	ii.  repentance

  Beauty come now; don't damn me all-lost to light,
  just hear-and heéd-how my  bluffed labor lips blight;
  tender it back and buckle that fate bossed on Your throne:
  knuckle down the razorscaled squall of curls thronged
  against Your catholic daemons, as Leviathan coils,
  as Fear's font foams and bodes, bodes and boils;
  here, the snake shown joyful-mad in chasmic fault,
  here, burst in Your burn;  just so come to squelch, come halt
  the steady hammer-blow-rising low and stammer
  of me, dealt from devotion through the double-dealing clamor
  of Fear, whorer of height and hót white wánt,
  who hisses "have her or don't ladder love's ascent."
  What venom of bitter deceit!  What stinging bile!
  that the bargained work would stunt grace trapped, would beguile!
  that it could clamp a soul low-wrung but bodysuch!
  that Fear incites me to intend myself more clutch
  than to simply labor, than to love simply much!

 

 	   	iii.  illumination

  Quit dagger-bright Orion's quivering reign,
  come, Beauty, hitch the old seers, again
  born into a gryphons' pride, god-proud and each blessed
  with fluid flank, engine-wings, barrel breast
  and roaring eyes of arrow-scorch; yoke to Apollo's
  car these first to drive my desire's furrows:
  King David whose plucked office fires blue sin;
  the vatic laureate self-crowned with his own lyrics for-the-win;
  then plowman Jacob, my namesake Israél,
  disguiser who grappled uranian force, but fell;
  Avila's rapt lover; the scribe of the Word's dressed vine;
  Diotima's charge; my Diotima, the prophet of Albion;
  Dante's august debt and the sad Oxford father
  who would thresh from its husks my musical soul,
  would Your first flame gáther;
  and burning Sappho, once tenth, now she spears my sense, deált
  and blue, with a delicious smile-of-wonder melt.

	    	iv.  redemption

  Quick as the sun's píkes woúnd shadows' worst
  dark, You come to flush my feverish thirst
  with Your careful smile-it crushes!-o just loók away!
  Yet You turn to me, turn toó our privilege and pray,
  "Do not be afraid for I have ransomed you.  No more about
  your snare and steel and coffer, but river out
  devotion and pilgrim after forms of divinity,
  so you might stay the dawn-búrst of Beauty's sudden sea.
  Now god lífe, spoon it, wind líps, hót half-gásp,
  nestle its neck and tummy-nooks, lóve its cusp,
  that soon she may take your wrist, press your fingers to her side."
  Beauty speaks, and I am atorch, I cán abide.
  My sculpted faults topple away, scraps heaved
  off let rhythm become tenacious, the indwelling, out-lived.
  And may my tendered music only be the test
  that to guard the first flame, that this is deep passion
  deeply expressed.


  Completed March 2, 1999,
  at Beck Chapel, Bloomington, Indiana