Reductio

Reductio

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.

~