Beakers ready, gentlemen,
titration calibrated to the critical degree;
unveil the poetry distilled
until reagents strike at all the barriers
that we erect in love, in agony,
in little niches, shadowy within the walls
along the course to home.
The night is warm and lovely,
radiance too harsh for summer's mists;
encomium may palliate the grave
yet leave it heaving with the frosts of truth.
May I not listen to the night?
May I not revel in its sweetness?
There is the lover with a heart congealed;
I would not see the distillate.
I could not care, for I am moved
not by nuance but by the lumbering
advance, the shameless ploy
of glorious beasts too wise
to manifest themselves within
that paradise of art I face,
that soft chagrin emerging, ghostlike,
from around my pen.
~
