Gather Your Philosophy Around You
Gather your philosophy around you
like a cloak against the wind
Spit in the face of the icy rain
Give yourself a slap across the chops
Wake up
This time belongs to only you
Do not give it away, do not piss it away
The hour glass accelerates
Don’t slow yourself down, keep up
The rest will come, you need not force it
Look and see
Listen and learn
Fill the pages of your book
Your book — your book
The Gods Have no Secrets
from Persephone
The gods have no secrets. Their lightest thoughts imprint
The brow of nature with their latest testament:
All things tremble with their rage, and rage with their woe,
Air seethes and crackles, stars fail and fall, wild winds blow,
And the world, pressed by an ever colder gust,
Seems to drift from the sun, as a foundering vessel must
Drift from an hospitable shore when its rudder
Is wrecked, when there is no saving the life of Summer —
Then it is that mother Ceres, benefactress
Of the Green Earth, neglects her charges in distress;
Her sunflowers sag, stunned and stupefied with rain,
Their yellow faces streaked and stained a teary green,
And her forests, (entorched with pain that Ceres grieves,)
Light the descent to Winter, giving up their leaves,
Cold, brittle candles that flame, consume, and crumble,
Vain votives that evoke light and warmth that must fail;
Her birds sing no more, her beasts roam no more — they flee,
Or burrow and sleep. They dream of a memory,
Only half believed, and hopeless anticipation —
They dream of Life, buried in Life’s sad ruination.
Grace May Disguise
Grace may disguise
a pain;
it cannot hide it.
Its opaque drape
moderates pain’s ragged shape,
arranging moral flora beside it,
so that instead of pain we see
a living tableau
of Courage contending with Fragility.
Grace is a benign battle flag
in this picture —
less like cloth than smoke
the flag is spun;
its haze pervades the field
where the spirit refuses to yield
to itself. The battle is a silent one.
The sole combatant will concede it
to Nobility alone —
Nobility as Nature has decreed it.