Refractions

I lost the light of one day, heard the voice 

Of unseen waterfalls peopled by blind 

Fish, saw masterpieces of water, stone, 

Gravity and time, night heaven thick with 

Stars, comet flame, sublime theatric trick. 

Our conversation with nature is not

Just what it seems.  The senses intervene, 

Mix with all they report. Our first mistake 

The belief circumstance gives the joy we 

Give to circumstance.  Life is ecstasy, 

Sweet as nitrous oxide.  The child amid 

Heaps of illusions walks, and he lives by

Imagination.  He does not like to 

Be disturbed.  Even the prose of streets is 

Full of refractions.  Fancy enters all 

Details though we die better contented 

For this amusement of eyes.  The din is 

Never hushed, carnival is always at 

Its height.  Nobody drops his domino, 

And the chapter of fascinations is 

Long.  The pageant marches at all hours with 

Music, banner and badge. We live within 

Hallucinations, snow storm illusions, 

A vast crowd, poor, orphaned, furious mad, 

Commanding new showers of deceptions 

To battle, distract, enchantments thatched thick.

Few have overheard the gods, surprised their 

Secret.  All is a riddle, one dream and

Another.  Now and then a boy, eyes just

Lacking the requisite refractions to 

Clothe the show in glory, his tendency 

To trace the glittering miscellany 

Of fruits and flowers home to one root, but 

It’s the duty of every pious man 

To keep up the comedy.  We rightly 

Accuse he who would destroy illusions. 

What if the play and playground of all this 

Pompous history radiate from the 

Self?  That the sun borrows his heavens?  A 

Shoestring, some galaxy we braided, the threads 

Time and nature.  What terrible questions 

We ask.  We arrive at the secret that 

Sweeps belief out—the soul doth not itself 

Know.  He makes his body.  He denies he 

Makes it, every atom nature’s whole, the 

Mind open to omnipotence, endless 

Striving ascents.  We cannot write our moods’ 

Shifting winds, but these alterations are 

Not without order and justice, castoffs 

Wailing stupid and comatose, lifted 

From bed to bed, from the nothing of life 

To the nothing of death.  The air stills, clears,

Clouds lift.  There, on thrones, they, with him alone.