Sonnet: To Death

However often I have sewn my heart,

Enwrapped my flesh within the shroud you spread,

Like breath at birth is every needle’s dart,

Like birth is breathing till the nerves are dead.

Inside the veil, the warp and woof of steel

Secure me, soothing me to smooth my fears,

While binding those it cannot quite conceal

Into this web-work dulled by time and tears.

These threads have wound and woven with my veins,

However fast my blood can flee away;

Immersed, they wear my life like fading stains,

No dyes absorbing, never more to fray.

     My pulse: the dangling thread that pulls me on,

     Entwining me until the thread is gone.

There Is No Happiness in Things

There is no happiness in things,

Image credit:
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/18024998.

No lasting beauty, peace, or joy,
Except in spells poor bards deploy.
The world’s a song the thrasher sings:
All improv with no melody,
A tune that holds our hearts in thrall
And that our minds cannot recall
But try—and only parody.

A bubble rides upon the stream
Of mind from peak to valley floor
Then bursts, released to rise once more
Into the airy realms of dream.
Just so, whatever can be got,
Perceived, or else believed can be
No more than desert nomads see:
Oases born when brains get hot.

So sweet the springtime breezes blow
Like leaf-clad revelers made drunk
By nectar sipped from blossoms sunk
Into the sparkling dew below.
They twirl and raise the summer’s fire,
Which stokes the seeds to bear their fruits
Till harvest time, so too the roots
To gather strength for winter’s ire.

The seasons’ magic circle spins,
Not halting once to catch its breath;
Since any pause would bring its death,
It only ends where it begins.
And round about the new year’s birth,
When winter tucks its tail to run
And green grows gold beneath the sun,
New life peeps out from frozen earth.

But ever after snow must come,
And frost must nip the boldest bud,
And northern winds must chill the blood
Till bones are ice and flesh goes numb.
Remembered warmth becomes a sin
Indulged in secret, shadowed cells
As devils watch from flaming hells
To see how many souls they’ll win.

This sin, which tears the tender hearts,
Must be the first of mortal kind:
The wish for simple peace of mind
Though sorrow comes, though peace departs.
This stain cannot be cleansed by tears,
By blesséd waters washed away:
The mark passed on from day to day
Through thoughts and feelings, loves and fears.

Thus bittersweet is every bliss
(Though pure ambrosia on the tongue),
And on and on the lips are stung
By thorns within the softest kiss.
These pains, borne on in hopes they’ll ease
And somehow make their victims whole,
Reveal that no one can control
What next may come, and nothing please.

A faith will crumble, touched by doubt;
Perfection fall to chaos, too,
If something shifts the well-known view
Or closes off the normal route
One walks each day through wood and field;
And safety turn to utter war
Despite the blood shed long before
From wounds reopened, never healed.

The knotted scars that ever burn
With every pulse’s steady beat
May be at once the great defeat
And final triumph left to earn:
The bearer’s choice alone can change
A self-made curse to saving grace
And greet the world with smiling face
In vibrant, natural exchange.

Alas, for any gain is loss
Within the tightly binding chain
Both forged and worn by every brain,
And each a nail within the cross
Of molded dust and skulls that glow
So pale beneath the setting sun
That sinks to sleep, its journey done,
In dreams its earthen sheets bestow.

But here the waking watch and fret
For light to lift its head and shine
While shadows creeping close confine
Their thoughts to dwell in dark regret
Until, at last, their watchman wakes,
Relights his lamp, repels the night,
And makes the caverns fully bright
Till every gladdened heart partakes.

Then all upon the Earth rejoice
To feel their burdens slightly lift
And think their lives a precious gift;
Unnumbered lives unite to voice
Their praises—and the Earth replies
In birdsong, thunder, waterfall!
Now every life, from large to small,
Inspired by breath that never dies,

Arises to the clearing skies
On wings of pinions gilded gold
To soar with glee no fears withhold
And view the world with newborn’s eyes.
At times it seems the cosmos rings
With angels striking fairy strings—
But still the pensive wood thrush sings:
There is no happiness in things.

Hymn to a Dying Sun

O fiery father:
Take your burning brand
From off my back.

No longer can I see the sky,
No longer feel the Earth--
The two old gods who
Hold me here,
These elements and familiars,
Who are scorched
And turning into ash,
Beneath the torch of your touch--

Like me: bent beneath
Your burden, your mass,
Like me bent lower
By your light.

For fire brings no forgiveness:
The forests are healed
By the scorched Earth's sadness
And the sky's sorrowful tears.
Never by you, your fury,
Your old man's clinging force
Grasping with blazing fingers
Of bitter, lonely possessiveness.

O fiery father:
Your blood has slowed
But still your face is blinding.

Like me: blind and blazing,
Like a broken sunflower
Bent to the ground
But always with my face to yours--
Even while I wither,
Even while my seeds dry up--
And always anxious for the dusk
That will not have a dawn.

So fire has no forgiveness:
But time knows not of mercy,
And light years have an end
Like embers dying, dark and cold.

Moon and Stars: A Hymn

Another post with Kabbalistic imagery and inspiration.

Moon and Stars

A Hymn

The diamond of the universe
Was shattered in the distant past
And scattered through the dreary void
    To liven up the space.

It broke apart like hand-blown glass
That falls upon a cobbled floor
Or like a lonely human heart
    That loves too much to rest.

But now the moon, a polished pearl,
Is smiling down to draw the tides,
The ebb and flow and wax and wane
    Of water, blood, and time.

Its gravely steady lunar force
(The parent and the child)
Is reaching out, as mothers would
    To stroke a baby’s cheek,

To seek the shards that lie about
Wherever chance has tossed them out
Like seeds of light upon the soil
    That spring will call to sprout.

Extending through the infinite,
Collecting them with tireless care,
It turns and turns to look about
    Till every sliver’s found.

And now this polished pearl the moon
Is dangling on a silver chain,
The priceless centerpiece that shines
    When set amongst the stars.

No, Time

No, Time

The ticking clock has a terrible sound:
The death screams of flickering moments
That are born and then suddenly gone
As echoes that slip into silence and sleep.

The shallow breaths and steady beat
Of Time’s unwavering heart are hard
To bear, and their stubborn insistence
Will wear away walls made of stone

In the heart and the gut stiff with sorrow
As the mind struggles blindly to grasp
The fading shadows of memories
And the ghosts of the moments long past

That were lived and were shared then forgotten
In a wrinkle or fold of the brain
Until tragedy dusts off the cobwebs
To show us the faces again,

Though changed, like a wispy reflection
Of sunlight in smoke in a mirror
That dances but cannot take shape
Before sunset steals it away...

The moments are dying and slipping away,
The memories sink into darkness and sleep,
The ticking clock has a terrible sound,
And I can but sit and stare in the deep.

Time is not a healer of wounds,
And time speaks no comforting spell.
Time is but a rambling fool
Who whistles while wandering to Hell.

Marah, Sea of Tears

There was a time in which the majority of my intellectual energy was devoted to researching, pondering, and writing about mystical and occult traditions. Foremost amongst these was Kabbalah, both in its Jewish and Western manifestations. While I do not believe in these systems, their beautiful imagery and symbolism and ontology still pluck a few nerves. This poem dives into Binah, one of the sephirot in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life...

Marah, Sea of Tears

How have I peered into those shadowed depths
And seen the world's demise?
   Can this same sorrow that she breeds
   Be where this serpentine path leads?
Are these same tears that swallow up my eyes
The resting-place of dreams?
Or shining seeds of vile destruction, each
Born from her darker side?

Engraved upon the blackness of her calm,
Smooth surface, still as Death,
   I see reflected many things,
   Foremost amongst them Saturn's rings;
Bewitched, I gaze and fall under the spell
Of ancient Father Time
Who, filled with vengeance, tells me mortal life
Is finite, futile dream.

And so I feed with my despair young twins,
The children of this Sea:
   For she is Mother, Dark and Light,
   Whose womb gives birth to Day and Night.
Full-grown, up from the softly crashing surf
The Son and Daughter spring,
Both born, like Aphrodite, from the foam
That breaks upon the sand.

Her name is Understanding to the brave
Ones who have felt her Love.
   While drowning all to purify,
   She strengthens as we pass her by.
I fear that, unlike Noah's guiding dove,
I have no hope of land:
Have I been left, forgotten, lying at
The Gateway of the Soul?

Yet while I drown so slowly, softly, drunk
Upon her salty wine,
   I ponder: Do her waters feed?
   Or, overbearing, drown the seed
Of Life's own Rose that has been placed with Love
Into the heart of Man?
And then with tenderness she shows me that
In truth there's naught to fear:

   Our greatest joys are sorrow-born;
   True Heaven lies past lands forlorn;
   In demon's shrouds is God adorned.

Fullness

Fullness

A fat moon face
Smiles down on the world
In the darkness
Of waking night
In the stillness
Of frozen wind
And stops its drifting
For a time it seems
While red metal rooftops
Change colors
In a flash
Change planes
In a glimpse
Change states
In a wave.
Shall we go for a swim?

The Power and the Glory

The Power and the Glory

We flow into this world in a river of tears
Over whitewater rapids of fury and pain
As though dragged from our home, now a memory’s glimpse
That floats on the surface, breaks the skin, and then sinks.

And thus we dive into a long-dead sea,
Or so it seems despite the blinding light—
But cold, so cold, it bathes our naked flesh,
It flushes out our newborn innocence.
And yet our eyes are cleansed and truly see
Until the bitter waters of this timeless sea
Of mortal blood collect like cataracts, and years
Occlude in filmy, salty, stagnant tears.

So how can vision ever penetrate
The blinds upon our senses sealed and shut?
Or hope?  What hope can warm the darkened hearth
That chills within our chest and gathers dust?
The vision fades.  The womb becomes a tomb.
The endless Earth seems but a coffin’s core,
From mountaintop to valley, buried all
Within a claustrophobic, airless, shrinking space.

But breathe, just breathe the air, expand these lungs
That fill to feel what freedom might remain
For angel-minded beings bound in human skins,
For birds at heart who walk with crippled wings.
“Awake! arise! or sleep and farther fall!”
Each breath and burst of heart commands and begs—
But have we sense enough to hear and to believe
What every thrilling nerve and sinew sings
In every second always vibrating
With every other one in wondrous harmony?

For all the darts that seem to pierce our hearts with death
Are yet the pricks of hungry bumblebees
That enter in our blooms and work the spell
That fructifies another season’s miracle.
The atmosphere that shuts us in and holds
Our field of vision to the stark horizon’s edge
Is yet the greenhouse that allows our shoots
To grow protected from the wintry night beyond.

And the power of life is a heart that is broken
As the world shimmers softly when seen through our tears,
And the glory of life is a heart filled to bursting
As the world shimmers sweetly when washed with our tears.

River Flow Through

River Flow Through

O, were I at one with the River
flowing and winding through time and space—
not floating above
like a fractured auburn
oak leaf, cast off in the process
of seasonal change;
no, not a rider on rippling waves,
nor a stone who watches petrified
from below, mortared in mud
as the world wanders by,
always something going past
and wearing this surface smooth, away;
I must now somehow de-solidify my-
self, release these clinging
molecules, free these lusty electrons
from their compulsive whirl—
or circumambulation—
around the protons they desire;
but simple disassembly
can never wash it all away;
no sparagmatic frenzy,
no bacchanalian ecstasy,
can ever wear these stones away:
as Orpheus forever sings,
though scattered here and there,
until no single piece remains
no peace can ever come to stay
(true, I am no Orpheus…
but can I sing a different fate?):
let there be no surface, no tactile
barrier to break through,
and no sensation of the world
upon this stubborn skin:
by some profound osmosis,
let the River permeate
and absorb this ailing body
picking up and dropping
                     pieces
       of     itself
upon a dusty trail of tears
that fall as grains of sand;
irrigate me, soak my roots,
and turn these yellow fronds to green,
quench the fire that only dies
when all the kindling is consumed;
I must now somehow throw wide my pores
like windows in an April rain,
become transparent, forget opacity,
no longer occlude—send my shadow away:
let me shatter these stained-glass
relics of a crumbling temple,
tear down this weeping wall, seeping from
wounds old and new, wailing in the desert sun,
its tears drifting off to drown
a sad and stinking, stagnant sea;
there can be no shards, no remnants
glinting as they catch the light
and sink into the River
as it catches them but will not hold;
I must now somehow dissolve, aquify,
rewrite my chemical formula
to hydrogens balancing oxygen
in this great mathematical entropy,
this lawful chaos, this graduated flux
that pulses and shines phosphorescent:
let my color, my taste, be that of
the River, the water mingling all
yet always the same, its flavor
forever too subtle to place;
the tastes on this tongue are sour,
spoiled with poor storage,
this liquor an ichor of bitter lees
futilely swirled through a leaking skin—
O, I must somehow allow it to flow
through, flood through, wash through and be
the blood, the life that bears me up
and gently fills me day by day:
let me open up and drink until
I am as one with the River.

Poetry, etc.

Poetry, etc.

the sea does not try 

to ebb & flow & find the shore 

it can it does it will 

it simply is 

and washes over you

Sonnet: To the Dark Matter

Author's note: I wrote this poem back in 1999. I am still fascinated by dark matter, and a recent story on a new theory of dark matter sparked my memory of this old sonnet (I was fascinated by the sonnet form for a while, too...).
 
Sonnet: To the Dark Matter

Something there is that yet still may not be:
Theories, conjectures, like folktales, abound;
Black mortar holding the bright tiles, for me:
Though ’tis concealed, amongst darkness be found.
In that abyss of the void in-between
Glistening gods man has too long revered
Lieth that crutch on which stars and spheres lean
(Key to a Nothing from which life appeared).
Look then, ye stargazers, upon that light
Wearied by lovers (like roses and dew!),
Thinking the luminous is the aright,
Certain that “Nothing there is!” is not true.
     Nothing: it is that which I gaze upon,
     Hiding itself ’neath the breaking of dawn.

Image credit: CosmoO, public domain image, via Wikimedia Commons.

Winter Garden

Winter Garden

Skeletons stand up from a field
Of snow, stretching to a white horizon,
And shiver in this crackling cold
As Boreas blows implacably.

It is impossible to remake this landscape
Even with a painter’s vision
Or make those skeletons live again—
Though a prophet, perhaps, could do it.

Our memories of picking ripe fruits
Are still fresh, but with frozen edges,
And we wonder how those skeletons
Ever bore flesh, bore fruit, and thrived.

The season of our discontent has come
And frozen the flesh on our bones,
While we gaze through the windows
And remember, foreseeing, the green.

That green fire is buried now,
Hidden deep beneath the snow,
But still it flickers and flashes out
At times—if you happen to catch it.

For this boundless blanket of snow
Is a mask, not the true face of Death,
And the seeds of summer and fall
Are sleeping and dreaming of spring.

Image credit: Paul Gauguin, La neige Rue Carcel (I), from Wikimedia Commons, public domain image.

Nightmares

Nightmares

Undone we are by the night of Time,

The realm of Saturn and his awful sons,

Forever fleeing from thunderbolts

And an unforgiving razor scythe

Wherever we may run and hide,

Unable, unwilling to blink or breathe;

And every breeze is the burning breath

Of a better predator bringing death.

The night is not ours to control,

Those hours of unwilling return

To primordial eons of living

Not as predators but as prey,

The slithering fear still lurking

At the base of our swollen brains

And in all those chilling whispers

That are far too fast to outrun.

In the darkest moments of terror,

Under a boundless starless sky

And a demoniac grinning moon,

The Abyss is singing lullabies

That steal every inkling of sleep,

And evil creatures are skulking

Towards Earth on broken paths

Of fractured, faltering light.

When daylight dies, the memories

Too deep for evolution to touch

Awake and bare their fangs, alive

Again in the shadow of death;

And then, in a neural flash, is gone

The gauzy illusion of supremacy

That we have created just to survive

In the face of unconquerable death.

But not long ago, in the night of Time,

We were the hunkering prey,

And we were the passing indigestion

Of some smarter, faster beast,

And we were the victims of Nature’s disinterest,

And we were the scavenging vermin…

Now haunting our dreams and memories

In this night we can never escape.

Image credit: Christine Matthews, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Burial

Burial

We buried her quietly in the front yard,

When the sun had set and the rain had ceased,

The dying light allowing us to dig

A shape just larger than the meager box

That held her body, several-hours cold,

Which we should never have a need to hold.

We had seen her, and her mate, as well

As many groups of children through the years,

The happy couple returning every year

To nest beside a creek, and waddle by

The same old busy streets, and stop to eat

Beneath some feeders in a neighbor’s yard.

And here they were, the family at this feast

So readily at hand, habituating them

To bear the presence of people all around,

When out of nowhere and without a care

One careless, reckless driver in a rush

Struck her, mother mallard, and just drove on…

“She’s dead,” I heard and looked upon

Her still and silent form cradled so tenderly,

Thus cradled while alive and as she died;

So light yet bearing all the weight of death,

She seemed as though asleep, but no—

She slept forever, dead by a single blow.

We sowed some sweet alyssum seeds upon her grave

And apologized in vain for our so-selfish race

While bearing all the weight of needless death,

Of all the suffering wrought by human hands

And the cold machines that we have built in vain

To keep their blood off of our blood-stained hands.

Image credit: Catherine Munro, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

On the Edge

On the Edge

The edges creep in from time to time,

And all the wild things

Sitting on these borders

Step over the line

Like wicked spirits

Slinking through a break

In a fragile magic circle.

Things get interesting

Out there on the edge

Where domestic and wild

Can mingle for a while,

Swap stories and reminisce

About the good ol’ days

When they were much closer.

Design meets spontaneity

In a fit of indecision,

A weighing of desires

And unforeseen consequences,

Until architecture and engineering

Become biological,

Entwined in a double helix

And fueled by the power

Of a circling sun.

That is all well and good

Out there on the horizon,

To be watched like a sunset

With space in between.

But the edges creep in,

Softly like a butterfly

Slipping on in through your skin,

Contracting like concentric circles

Sucked into a singularity,

Now a bottomless black hole

With the weight of a universe

Lodged firmly, intently,

Right between your eyes.

Here the edges lie for a time,

Lodged like a chrysalis

With some strange creature inside,

Soon to fly out to the edge of the world.

Image credit: Richard Webb, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Traveler's Blues

Traveler's Blues

These roaring metal wings are taking me
Away, reluctantly, from all I love,
Unlike young Icarus, who strove to fly
Amongst the birds but fell from high above.

Not pride, desire, intention, nor a need
To stretch my limbs and wander with the breeze
Has placed me here, watching the world below
Grow dim, a forest now instead of trees.

And though that distant place has fallen dark,
I sit awake, alone, enclosed, compressed,
And carried forward like a falling star
Consumed by dread of touching down, depressed

To leave the heavens, if but for a while,
Yet powerless to turn these wings around
And fly like mad to all that matters now:
The one to whom, though I may fly, I’m bound.


Image credit: Aleposta, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

The Iowa Dirge

The Iowa Dirge

I hear so many screams
Bestial cries
Of terror and pain
Cut off
           choked out
                            throttled
                                        shocked into silence.
And death.

Death in obscurity and shadows
Produced on an assembly line
Manufactured in factories,
Industrialized
Commodified
Widgets
            of flesh, blood, feather, bone
Clipped beaks
Docked tails
And pools of blood and feces
To bathe in on every square inch
Of the cold hard concrete floors.

The whir of the machines
The pneumatic jab of the bolt gun
The buzz and sizzle of electrical water,
All things hardwired into the machine.

Cogs spin
Gears scream
Teeth clench and lock and whirl
Wheel within wheel
Of satanic mills whirling
Vortexes sucking in flesh
Ground up
Butchered
Choice cuts separated
And the rest shipped overseas
Unwanted
But worth something
Sold or rendered
To minimize waste
For better returns on the dollar.

What is the price
Of each life severed?
Where does that figure
Into corporate projections
Shareholder dividends
And stock-market ratings?

Are the costs of those lives
Outsourced
Externalized
Written off
Subsidized
As the necessary costs
                                   inevitable evils
Of the machine at work,
The assembly line running
From field to table
from seed to fork
from soil to stomach?

Show me.
I want to see them.
Show me the balance sheets.
Show me the assembly line.
Let me hear their cogwheels whirling.
Let me hear the teeth, the gun, the steely screams.
Let me know how your fortified food factory
                                                                       the Earth
Runs like a well-oiled
                                  machine
Under the iron fist of your
Systematized
Homogenized
Streamlined
Assembly line.

The doors of your factory are locked.
The windows, like mistakes on the factory walls,
Are barred, locked, sealed, covered.
There is barbwire atop the chain-link fences.
The security guard is armed and refusing access.
(And are those snipers on the rooftop?)
But all I want is
To see
to hear
to smell
to know.

The grocery-store packages, boxes, cans
Are dumb witnesses
Speaking nothing
Silent like the guards outside your factories—
I know because I have asked them,
Inquired in vain
For you have them well trained,
Like the people shuffling down the aisles,
And narrativized
Through the PR department
In which life becomes a widget
And then becomes a trope,
Farm to machine to idyll,
Built atop a humming machine.

The farmers
Shepherds
Shamans
Satyrs
Nymphs
Dryads
Are now all clocked in
Standing in their places
Along the line, day to day,
With no overtime, awful wages,
And sure as hell no benefits.
For they too are expendable,
A commodity
An expense
Wheel within wheel
Object upon object
Along the line, day to day.

I can hear the screams
Of the wheels, of the widgets,
Standing here beyond the arc lights
Outside of your fortified factory farm.
Let me in
                let me see
                                let me hear.
Let me know.

For I am not a part of your machine.

Image credit: Thomas Bjørkan, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Exhumation

Exhumation

There cannot be a dark in me
More dark than where the peeping stars
Are swimming now like luminescent
Phytoplankton in a boundless sea.
But underneath the waning moon
When all the world is wrapped in dreams
And feels the failing light grow frail,
I breathe myself into a fog
Of silvery silence, cold and pale,
Where endless space is soon erased,
Replaced (if only for a time)
By shapes and shades I cannot name,
Though beckoning like memories
That sit beyond the edge of thought
And wave like trees in midnight winds.
But when one looks more carefully
Within that dark that mirrors space,
Forever severed out of time,
The light, as always, flits and fades,
As fog chokes out both light and night
To make a separate darkness there,
And here, in me, and bid me sleep.
But as I slip beneath the blanket
Offering eternal dreams of peace,
I feel a hand upon my cheek,
Another on my chilling heart
That is itself so near to sleep
As if grown weary from its toil.
And with their touch the clammy mist
Disperses, sinking down to earth,
And leaves that dark of cosmic night
Alight with all the things we wish,
Which shimmer now within my reach,
Reflected in two moonlit eyes
That somehow see a light in me
That flickers as a night-bright star.

Image credit: Josh Lewis, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Black Lace Beauty

Black Lace Beauty

To Rosemary

With thin black lace on pearl-pale skin,
Her beauty hiding here and yet revealed
While flirting sweetly with her nakedness
So close and yet concealed.
She lies in webs of shadows that
Embrace her soft, enthralling form,
Embodiment of Beauty, now
Much more ideal by being real.
Could I but place a trembling kiss
Upon her wryly smiling lips,
And place my daring hands
Upon her fine and supple hips?
Though how and why Beauty has come
And taken shape in soft black lace
I cannot fathom or begin to guess,
I stand and gaze into her glowing face
And touch her body bathed in light
Like day that bears the touch of night.

Image credit: tonynetone, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Opening the Eye

Opening the Eye

This old poem is another experiment with Chaucer's Rhyme Royal form. It is based on the legend that if you repeat Shiva's name enough times, he will open his eye and destroy the universe.

 

Awake, o dweller in the barren plains

Of dust and ash, of long-forgotten bones!

Thy ancient slumber hath endured too long

And blind men worship thee in cold black stones.

O God, destroy till naught of life remains!

Thy potent power shall blot out a race

Of cowards, cozened by a shepherd’s song

Of life eternal in his father’s grace.

The time hath come for men and gods to die:

I chant the name to open Shiva’s Eye.

’Tis neither bliss nor loss of Self I seek,

Not dissolution into life divine,

No paradise is where my path shall end:

These foolish faiths are not as strong as mine.

For all but Nothing changes form, is weak,

Subjected to the whims of selfish Time;

But thou, o God, can all these wrongs amend

By granting me thy burning gaze sublime!

The time hath come for men and gods to die:

I chant the name to open Shiva’s Eye.

Both joy and grief are simply shadows cast

By dense obstructions on the brightest day

(Remove the body and the image flees,

Remove the sun and shadows pass away).

The universe is but a soul held fast

Upon the Balance that may rise or fall;

Its fate depends on what the scale decrees

But none shall exit from this judgement hall.

The time hath come for men and gods to die:

I chant the name to open Shiva’s Eye.

Enough! Man’s “laws” and “systems” are but this:

The games that come when idle minds conspire;

Let Babble take the name Philosophy

And make Religion its perverted sire.

So self-assured, man leads himself amiss

(As if with thinking seconds can be bought!),

Expecting something that can never be

Except within his own deluded thought.

The time hath come for men and gods to die:

I chant the name to open Shiva’s Eye.

Mistake me not, there is no vengeance here

Within this heart for my misguided kin;

’Tis only seeing all that they have lost,

’Tis truly knowing what they could have been.

But Pity acts as servant-girl to Fear,

And that is gone from out my heart as well:

They sold their souls, now they must pay the cost

Of entrance into their internal hell.

The time hath come for men and gods to die:

I chant the name to open Shiva’s eye.

The heavens quiver at my solemn hymn,

A paean driven both by hate and love,

And angels hide themselves within their wings

As star-shine darkens in the sky above.

A world of light is now a wasteland dim

And fast approaching is its date with death

When all shall perish: just like finite things,

The vast immortals draw their final breath.

The time hath come for men and gods to die:

I chant the name to open Shiva’s Eye.

Awake, my God, and take this life away!

In brilliant splendor let me be embraced.

When pain and pleasure hath become the same

The only hope is that they be erased.

Too long in coming is the fateful day

When sunlight falls before descending night:

The Lord Destroyer wraps the world in flame

As all creation comes into His Sight.

The time hath come for men and gods to die:

Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva…