Poems Opus One (15) by Charles Bryant: The Finer Substance

THE FINER SUBSTANCE

The poet must not sing a sweetened, fairy rhyme
beneath an August moon; nor must he lie on beds of thyme
and swoon away with beating, ebbing heart.
This is not the way of modern art -
or so I've read.
And I have thought, and it's been said,
that we must grasp the real and potent world,
discarding all the daydreams over-pearled
of knights and queens and dragons dead.

Dear God, if you be there, please grant this boon:
that I might be a decent poet soon
and put aside my fairy tales and dreams
and invoke, instead, a world that's as it seems,
even though it's not as I would see it.
Let me cast away the alluring images that flit
with beckoning, teasing grace about my mind and thought
and drag me down, asphixiate, towards the poet's primary fault
of self-intoxication, bit by bit.

Let me try to be sincere and true
to the age and myself. Let me see right through,
both in living and in art, the lie, the subtle lie,
of insincerity that always stands about us till we die.
Let me look through actions and the art of words
and see what's what, divide the milk and curds.
Let me take the finer substance to myself
and consign the rest to the hidden, dusty shelf
where lie the tattered nests of long-dead birds.

BEGINNING AND ENDING

Strange thoughts are these, strange notions.
Shall I enter this garden?
See here the weird emotions!
See here my wondrous burden!
Burden down my life with love.
Goddess with enruptured skin:
you are no ivoried dove,
your breasts are empty and thin.
What you show is nothing much;
what you hide should be displayed;
every glance from you is touch,
every word a thought depraved.

Year shall pass away from year;
thought shall pass away from thought;
you and I shall grow more near,
year in year and thought in thought.
We shall be like metals mixed:
fused in one direct appeal;
flame-dissolved we now are fixed:
heart in heart we shall anneal.
When the bellows' work is done
you and I shall burn as gold.
Mind in mind shall be as one:
thought in thought the common mould.

LOVE AND VOID

I sometime thought myself a bag of dark,
an empty draught of nothing held to light,
a fallen, broken, painted piece of bark
or scattered meteor swarming in the night.
The Buddha said the world was all aflame:
your heart and mine beat always out of tune;
revere the blank and all the passions tame
and you and I shall reach Nirvana soon.

Enclosed within that unresponsive void
how might we know the thinker from the thought?
Within the pure and groundless gold alloyed
at least we know the seeker from the sought.
Or now or soon the veils of smoke roll back
and you and I can see that each exists -
twin Samsons we, and all the pillars crack
on which the temple of the void subsists.

We dwell within the open spheres of light -
Nirvana is a shadow on the sun
and thus abhorred. Twin bodies, twin eyes bright
are all the peace we need, each made as one.
O fall we now within the magic dream.
O void enacted on the face of void.
Soul, lips and heart with-held within the beam,
and thine and mine and you and me destroyed.

And what we feel, is this perpetual peace?
And can your eyes dissolve within my glance?
Can we begin to live at our surcease?
And does the void of love our love enhance?
Our questions circle round us circle-wise
and every thought depends upon a dream.
The void must all our lucent thought advise
and love complete the void within its theme.

CHAMBER-CONCERT

Under low-set lamps musicians blow and suck;
hanging tapestries incense the woodwind.
A world is being created beneath this roof.
The audience is caught up and flung,
gasping for breath, against themselves -
made to see their own inviolable core
and basis of existence as musicians blow and suck.

Spirit revealed to body through body's agency.
Blowing and sucking producing instant vision.
Body accepting mind-inflicted rapture.
The two combining, creating sudden joy.

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[dsbuchalter]

This rocks. Speaking of seeing through the matrix. Plato's Allegory of the Cave. But better said.

[Poemsapennyeach]

Whitman led the way.

[keanghiero]

THANKS, NICE poems, dear Chas.

All the best

Kean