In Order to Uncloak the Hidden Garments Lying in My Soul

In order to uncloak the hidden garments lying in my soul, garments
Of obsidian and gold, flashing by turns in the light like
Spears or cornered steel or twilight rows of setting
Rays each piercing thick testimony of earth, rays each
Racing like the falling of the down, racing like the movement
Of the globe, whispering of lips in the night (fair winds and
Leaves by the steady spread of a sail like a white omen
In the infinite tumult of black) spreading and gleaming for your
Kisses I long, give me the kisses of your lips, for their taste to me
Is sweeter than wine; sharp wine poured fair by the Nemean band,
Liquor of youths and casting caskets floating in the bays, floating
On the walks and by the poles and near the beaches where the wood
Roughs the feet and poles and canopies bridge the distance from a gap of cool, dry
To some undiscovered, unseen, tower-rising walls that insignia insignia
Swirl out in sharp patterns, swirl out like pushing storms sucking up the water from the
[seas:
Seas, cool season of the bees, the frolicking of sand with sweets
Of flowers: periander, nectar, glories and the soft wilt
Of fragmenting leaves, petals like silk, sitting ‘neath the golden trees, where
The youths at night danced and kissed by bright fires, all gleaming
Sinuous turning to sizzle, all hissing smoke like devouring
Into the air; they turn and bodies brush, bodies in an excitement pounding
Of sweat, the heart, the mind cannot fathom into the depths, the cool darkness
Of the solid core, the heart; let all brush circles widening of fire, let all lips linger love:
Do not call: do not whisper: do not speak love before its time: time
Of the falling petals, time when the leaves begin to wrinkle, purple of the periander,
Periwinkle fading, falling, like petals strewn about the floor for all the gods
To walk on love: first in the procession, lovely Venus, she walks with folds and gowns
Tumbling down like waterfalls, tumbling down like the lily perched
In fariest place of grass, and followed by the crown of Virgil’s ears, who ever gazing
Into the wood, resounds his mind, resounds with the fair resounding halls
Of marble, and a vague sword lies clutched within a statue’s chest, and a warrior’s breast-
Plate gleaming, arms and torrents and hoards: all beginning in a spark, an instant,
Like the flash of white (periander) white in Myrtle’s leaves. He is a whisper
As Athena clutches Nike in the night, the moonlight streaming down her silver hair,
Falling into the earth, falling like the woven threads of Atropos and all three maids
Who gaze with longing at the wood-work of the works: here she cuts
With a gleam like all refractions of the sun; their she measures
Like mountains – and who spools the thread with a grim glimmer in her eye
Reflected like the shadows of the torch-light on the waters, where the perfect bodies
Raise and move and lap like waves by the sea, waves cascading, pounding on the shore?
The youths will turn – they will dance arm in arm, they will rediscover
The secret ways of seemings for their peers, and peer into the sullen
Stone faces carved in the mountain, stone dwellings of their fathers in their basilisks of
[old:
Long, empty halls, dark, where the scrape of foot echoes like a lyre-song drifting
From beyond a door, a chasm, a shadow in the mists: the mists coil thick and howl
Like beasts, like banshees, slobbering on their pray, they devour
Torches, they eat light like
Blind souls hungry from darkness, they splice
Their bodies into the chaos of a frame, they carve and whittle away the rock
To a smooth surface, uniformity of time, a single icy peak, cloaked in snow,
Jabbing like a hand to grab the stars: stars, fair youth, your face has watched them
Come and go like dancing prey and hunter on this tapestry of sky – I have watched
Your form heave, I have watched you gather in at cold the folds
Of your layered cloak, your cloak that seemed so thirsting to absorb and shutter in the
[gleams
Of all the manifold heavens: here again the archer lifts his arrow at your back, guarding
Against the scorpion, the bear, and all brave beast, whose eyes yet gleam the certainty
Of some stream that flows from edges of the earth, some stream to feed and find
The hunger of birth, and I have watched you part your lips, and laugh,
And in the gleam of your teeth, I have desired, how I have desired…