A Pilgrim's Song

 

When the moonbeams beat on your silken hair
and the serpent wind whipped the curtains where
you curled asleep in your velvet chair
I could not look without pity
on your coal-dream world where the wool-paths cling
to the iron-black earth and the pea birds sing.
With your cool-eyed sorrow and your crystal wings,
why did you leave for the city

when the dragon ships on the pagan sea
lit the sky with fire o’er your balcony
and the blood-red clouds through the yellow tree
betrayed your predictions of pleasure?
Your hands went loose in trembling flight
and your restless feet bit the shabby night.
While the miner sought the mountain’s height
you dug up the garden for treasure.

When he sold your song to the pirate's mill
you hooked his nerve with your fishing will
and paid your debts with the secret bills
you'd collected from his gambling.
You charmed his trust and he bit the bait,
but you met his grudge at the garden gate;
the toll was love but the coin hate.
I paid with a long year's rambling

from the gold-hill town on a hangman's horse
through winter's curse and summer's force
to the desert's edge. To spite’s remorse
I cried with weary passion,
"The vulture has its victory;
the moon has its divinity;
I my precarious dignity,
achieved in a bristly fashion."

Softly writ, the truth stands clean,
and no less tall though it stands unseen
by painted eyes with their lusting gleam
for the benefits of blindness.
I'd hoped to steal your heart from this
and spare your faith the branding kiss
of scrutiny's hypothesis
with my swift defending kindness.

I shoveled theories in the tiger's mouth,
assembled reasons from the north and south,
heaped my hopes and heaved my doubts
off over caution's railing.
I found wise souls like grinning skulls
poled on judgements deathly dull,
let waiting's twisted labors pull
my learning through my failing.

You yanked my bones from their grave's cool rest
and fleshed my frame with the dancing dress
you salvaged, wrinkled, from your treasure chest
of lies and eager errors
by choking rocks in the jungle streets
and wringing dreams from twisted sheets
with sad ideals and desp'rate feats
of disillusionment and terror.

Now my broken flute with its silent throat
turns a silver ear when your voice floats
like a mournful bell on a fog-bound boat,
like a bird at dusk in a meadow,
like a sad guitar on a far-off hill
which slips a slicing, stabbing kill
in the flesh of day. As your heart's quick skill
in willing bends my head low

like the helpless trees the whirlwind shakes,
as your fingers flex and your voice breaks
the stiff night air and your weakness makes
the lamplight into your alibi,
the purple curtain of the west's wide stage
descends upon your last act's rage.
You played a queen from a distant age
whose deeds she need not justify.

The circling stars guard their orbit's pride
like diamonds sewn in a black sheep's hide,
gone roaming alone to the river side
to drink his herd's rejection.
He hooves his wound in the sucking mire
at the water's edge where he flings his ire
in a pool that steams when he spits his fire,
but returns the lamb's reflection.

A cyclops moon in the cowering sky
glowers down and ogles my
immobile shame in your blaming eye,
in your frown's accusing worry.
Your scowls like demons dance in tune
with skeleton trees as the staring moon
shreds timid clouds; and their tatters, strewn,
etch a pattern of lunar fury.

I race my faith through the prophecies
and weigh their dogmatic properties,
compare their redeeming qualities
with my own judgement's merit.
Their appealing glittering mysteries,
their magic meaningless histories,
refuse my brain's abilities
to adopt the mask and wear it.

My vision swings from tottering stacks
of ancient books with curling backs
and yellow pages to the tracks
of refugees and drifters.
Defeated souls have passed this way,
too weak to wish, too proud to pray.
They've trudged away to denser days,
collecting aches and blisters.

I lie and brood for forty days
and nights, and jump from phase to phase
and flog with dreams my melting clay
and hug my ribs against me.
A voice roars, a thunder cries
my name. My heart and fevered eyes
respond with ancient flames, arise
and torch the bonds that fence me.

As I stand up my shackles slip.
I hide my curse and nurse my wit.
My jaws clamp shut on the future's bit;
I'm saddled to ride in the morning
down any path or likely route
where willow creeks and stony buttes
beckon me, allure my boots
with their promises and warnings.

My lips suck dry the river's flood,
I slosh across its muck and mud,
refresh its spring with my own warm blood
and scale the immaculate canyon
to the rim where wine-trees shout their fruit
and singing vines sink deep dry roots,
with flower horns and thistle flutes
my only true companions.

Through stubborn gates in the pre-dawn wall
the shadows glide and the visions fall;
the stars retreat and the mem'ries call
their warriors out to the bridges.
Dawn's pink hand smites the blue of night;
my will defends my freedom's right
to loot the past and aim its flight
at the sunrise over the ridges.

The prison's sieged by doubts. They're thrown
like spears of iron on bricks of bone.
The safe-boat comes, I leave alone.
The jewels gleam away in the water.
I float from the shore's fast-clinging sight,
from the caving roofs of the ruined night,
to meet the beacon of the surging light:
the future's young toddling daughter.

She climbs my leg as I thrust my heels
under time's hot sand where her first appeals
are sunken now. Her spirit feels
the tide with anxious hunger.
Her hugging arms wrap up my head,
surround my forces, kill my dread.
Her mouth makes gold my thoughts of lead,
her look turns knowing younger.

She lures my love to her mother's nest
and conceives herself in desire's breast
where her singing strings provide my rest
with labors worth serving her voice.
The child grows tall in my patient mind;
to my reeling sleep her touch is kind,
to my swaying brink her step is blind,
to my outlook she's bringing her choice.

She shall spill my truth to the mountains wide,
deliver my song with delight and pride,
redeem my dreams with her own heart's tide
waving in on the rocks of the nation.
As my story chants she'll dance her praise,
beat my fleeting drum with her golden rays;
she'll wind her roots with her branches raised
in the breath of her interpretation.

She may one day stall in reading me
long past her narrowing need of me,
laugh and recline and recede from me
to her love's response to her journey.
And I shall be found in my history,
in nature's continuing mystery,
in freedom's developing victory,
in my will and my work and my learning.