I would disclose myself to you

Just as I am.

Standing upright in the seamed palm of the world

Memory-stained, corrupted by time's lie

Caught in a ghostly clatter of words

Projecting myself five-fold into the universe

Much like a man.

I have feasted

And broken anger's precious urn

Clamorous with glazed dragons on its side.

Heard sad crows cursing cats

At evening in the clacking reeds.

Listened to pale stars

Murmur inconsequences round the pole

And in deep summer dark

Shadowed by wistful flutes

That drew a filigree question

Across the face of silence

Counted burst plums

Dropped from laden branches

At nearly stated intervals.

Indeed

I have feasted

And have risen then to dance

Trampling silver puddles

Where idiots ran crying through the rain.

And at my feasting

Was I not aware

How cold seas glittering shrugged

At the sailorwife's grief

For a legend lost with the wreck

Enfathomed in royal coral

Where the dark fish

Like shadowy thoughts drift by

Or hang like memoried hawks

In that watery sky?

And do you know me

As I know myself?

Dreading the wall, the cold bruise of the stone?

Reaching to touch a face, the flesh of the dark,

Fearful of touching lest it be withdrawn?

Watching myself among the tattered riders

Whip midnight's mad mare

Through a thousand noons?

So harried and bewildered

Not at one

Having lain with terror

Having swallowed sorrow's stone

Uncandled and unchanted

As best I can

Seeking life's grace

I burst my locks at last

I would disclose myself to you

Just as I am

As for the demons -

I invite them in!

Next: Spiritus Sanctus