The Earth Gods
And from the inner chamber of their nuptial ecstasy, we brought man, a creature who, though yielding and infirm, bears ever the marks of his parentage.
We have planted man, our vine, and tilled the soil
Who strives to reach you through gladness and through pain.
Love is a night bent down to a bower anointed,
The sparks rise, and each spark is a sun.
And in sleep sees what your waking eye does not see.
And the regret of pale old age when life against lifes will
Now I will rise and strip me of time and space,
I would be fulfilled.
How shall I guide thy course.
Lo, there is the dancer, carved out of our ancient eagerness,
To follow the seasons and support the majesty of the years;
The smile on lips that quiver
A youth in yonder vale
And still with greater longing to seek the mist again.
To perilous isles where days are slain,
Of those who dwell with death;
And the wind strewn sand nestles at her breast.
And rock your thrones.
And we are the enduring sky.
Our roots have brought forth the dancing branches in the valley,
A breath of our breath that had escaped,
Bear the seed of thy Redeemer,
And now amid his ardent cries
Flame to flame,
Roots that suck at the breast of purple earth,
Second God
They meet, two star-bound spirits in the sky encountering.
Thus shall we rule man unto the end of time,
You would teach me self love fulfilled in mans worship,
So I have burdened man
Brothers, my brothers,
Beat your strings
When the earth in her hunger cries for food;
And yet to give him hands slow in decision,
First God
And comrade us, masters of the young earth green and warm.
And seek not to comfort me with your dream or mine,
Cast off your mantle of brooding,
Man is a child of our younger heart.
God self-bent, whose yesterday is ever jealous of your tomorrow,
She leaps over rocks and streams
It is not a wanton decay of the flesh,
Our hands direct the tempests that sweep the world
Ours is the will he heralds,
Unwounded by the edges of the rocks;
To give him thirst for life, and make death his cupbearer;
I would not cling to that clings to me.
And thrice empty and vain is the dream.
And on to crucifixion.
He gazes full on her.
And woe upon woe exhaust earths vain fertility.
And watched it crawl from caves to rocky heights.
Third God
My passion and my pain.
And all that I have done is empty and vain.
As Orion watches us!
But less cruel have I been.
And the singer is crying mine own songs unto the wind.
And heedless is the sky.
And say in our heart,
Shouts to my god-heart in mid-air.
First God
And thrice higher is his song.
Petal unto petal they breathe the sacred perfume,
We are beyond all restless questioning.
And content with mans servitude.
Does the womb of the virgin infinite
Naked and unencumbered.
Seek you a distant orb,
And let love, human and frail, command the coming day.
That he may foretaste our tomorrow,
Third God
Calls unto divinity.
The night waxeth deep,
Brothers, behold, my brothers,
Nor the Supreme above us.
Your hands have spun mans soul
Gods live upon sacrifice,
The tentmaker sits darkly at his loom,
Into the emptiness of nowhere!
And say, It is a thing of clay,
The dripping brows of manhood tilling the barren land,
And yet to confine his days and his nights
And silence, the high tide of night, swallowed the hills,
Second God
You will not take it to the winepress and fill the cup.
I do indeed speak,
And in bondage is his honor and his reward.
Yet now you would break the thread,
Your sceptre cannot sway this destiny,
And in his life our self fulfillment.
But terrible is thy silence,
And yet his sunburnt throat throbs with the song;
One mightier than thy vision
And what would you do with man, child of our earliest heart, our own self image?
And the night unto dawn;
For all that I am, and all that there is on earth,
Oh, this ache of ceaseless divining,
And shaken the earth beneath him until he cried unto us;
When your own flock is seeking you,
You would not abandon him
It is the scent of burnt flesh, sweet and bountiful.
All these and all that lieth therein is bred for gods.
The innocence of childhood, and the sweet ecstasy of youth,
The loom and the art shall be yours for evermore,
Andhttp://www.99lib.net I wil dance in that field untrodden,
And throne me upon the heavens.
True it is, we are the beyond,
And twixt the meadow and the sea
I will to walk the path.
And ends with the lamentation of his children.
He sings no more,
The human pit that wearied me calls to divinity.
And made you breed in the cage?
Remembrance of cycles spent in mist,
The Earth Gods
And you, dying, conceived me deathless.
And unto the unknown where memory dwells not
Is it some other god in passion
For a lure that seizes youth and binds it to generate and multiply.
When desire and self are wrestling;
The three earth-born gods, the Master Titans of life,
We nursed the infant leaves.
I would not be so vain as to be no more.
Lies our sleeping, and the dreaming thereof.
Third God
Oh my soul, my soul,
Whose hand shall deliver thee from thy captivity?
Second God
To this breathless joy and fear?
But already achieved in its own greater heart.
Third God
And would not consider this star
Listen my brothers, my ancient brothers.
And where beauty is, there are all things.
Down in the myrtle grove
Weary is my spirit of all there is.
Or if I were the Supreme Godhead,
And to keep his body groveling in the mire
And sorrow that he may call unto us,
And dwell with us in this security
We are still earth-bound,
My god-heart within my human ribs
This I would breathe now and forever.
Till he hath died calling upon us.
Shall you return with distant tomorrow,
Then we walked, hand in hand, upon the gray infant world, and out of the echos of our first drowsy steps time was born, a fourth divinity, that sets his feet upon our footprints, shadowing our thoughts and desires, and seeing only with our eyes.
Nor to her children in their slow agony that you call love.
Yet I would comfort you,
And like the unresting sea
And the still sea mocks at thy immobility.
And the motive thereof.
And upon their eyelids lies a prayer
And with the infinate would I conquer the infinite.
Thou grounded ship laden with desire,
And from the memory of this silent youth, our younger brother,
To endow him with love that waxeth with pain,
And the proud majesty of love in tower or balcony;
Yea, what of this love of man and woman?
And brighter is the moon,
Till the land choke with its own bitter fruit,
Dwells in your own soul.
I bless you not, yet I would not curse you;
There is a wedding in the valley.
There is no centre in space
Like thee I have ridden the wild tempest over his head
No more shall we wrangle and reason of tomorrow.
High upon the mountain,
Oh, the joy in mortal intent,
First God
And feet heavy with deliberation;
Only the abyss listens when gods call unto gods,
To sing and dance its secret to eternity.
This tide of ever remembering and forgetting;
Oh, tempt me not with glory possessed,
His harp rings, His cymbals clash,
And we are the most high.
Whose mightier hand than yours shall reap the fruit?
And the breath of your burning heart,
To live, and to watch the nights of the living
And his thought as the tempests of the seas,
Thus has it been since the first morn
We watched the lean branches grow,
Who has Orion for a harp and the Pleiades for cymbals.
I speak, my unheeding brothers,
And naught but bread ungraced shall it be
Brother, my sacred brothers,
What joy is there in songs oft heard,
Shall our wisdom ravish beauty from his eyes?
To be, to rise, to burn before the burning sun,
In man we seek a mouthpiece,
Would that you might rise with all the dead of yore,
I will not turn my eyes downward to the conceit of earth,
And the dancers feet will move with my feet;
And womanhood warmed by the flame
And the west wind rises singing with his song.
Behold a brighter world
And windless is the space.
What would your armies of reasoning
To seek a shadowed nook and sleep in our earth divintiy,
And in that dancing and in that singing
And yet you would have me eat and drink.
This ever sowing destinies and reaping but hopes;
Through man who walks earth with eyes upon the stars, we find pathways to earths distant regions; and of man, the humble reed growing beside dark waters, we make a flute through whose hollowed heart we pour our voice to the silence-bound world. From the sunless north to the sun-smitten sand of the south.
For measureless is the gulf that lies between divinities,
Who sits beside us gazing into yonder valley,
For the cup is tainted, and the vintage therein is bitter to my mouth.
They set the air a-throbbing,
Yet keep his roots clinging to the earth;
Like a fawn in glad surprise
My arms woud girdle space and encompass the spheres.
From the lotus land where days are born
Who fills the emptiness of man and of gods,
And to heal the ills of man with our tideless breath!
Fain would I comfort you,
Mother of my chained divinity,
And thus shall it be to the last even-tide.
Second God
Would you leave the harvest ungathered,
I would turn my face to the south,
Their sinews strengthened by the deathless sighs
And creatures more starry supple to my mind.
Love is a distant laughter in the spirit.
And draw my life from stony lips
And his finger-marks shall not be erased.
For the weight of aeons is upon me,
And turns her to every side.
And in thine eyes the shadows of night are sleeping.
Fates that sound the trumpets
Love triumphs.
And exalts with desire, and increases with longing,
What flame has risen from hell.
I would rise beyond my earthbound mortality
When my soul sought itself among the mountains
This changeless lifting of self from dust to mist,
From living air and fire,
Or to our own passion?
You would bid me sit amongst shrouded faces
And I rebel.
And upon whose bodies loves chariot ran
Better it is for us, and wiser,
Is naught save our unshaped passion
We are the beyond and we are the Most High,
Dwells this night in a throat enflamed,
The girl has found the singer.
And though his lips move, utters not a word.
The flower that blooms in nights of evil shadows;
But you turn, and close your eyes,
Third God
Whilst the breath and the music come from beyond.
Oh my soul,
A thousand dew-stars are in her hair,
To raise man from secret darkness,
The bride comes from the heart of dawn,
And we are the flowering of the song-scent that rises to the heights.
And fadeth away with the first embrace;
The earth is your abode, and the earth is your throne;
And what higher tide shall release thy rudder?
And the challenge to human forbearance!
Their thrones are built upon the ashes of generations.
And when we reach her heart and are merged,
Where your sinews are planted?
And what nobler end than your thirst awaits the wine?
Where love encamps his host?
And would fain gather in your own shadow?
Beauty is a path that leads to self self-slain.
Ere the breath yields it to the wind?
And I will sing in that higher air,
And like thee, led the savage ocean against his nestled isle,
First God
Man is god in slow arising;
And in her limbs the happy dance is stayed
Save a man and a woman in the forest that grew to trap them
For ever as man is to man,
Whose strings have been half forgotten by His fingers
Whence shall come the wind to fill thy sail,
Yesterday, dead yesterday,
Thou burning sphere that girdles me,
And the anguish of the mother wrestling with the sleep she craves,
What flower has fallen from heaven,
The most distant is the most near.
And breathe my immortality into space,
Shall our measures subdue his passion to stillness,
What unbridled star has gone astray?
To give him gladness that he may sing before us,
That startled the heart of silence
A sky turned meadow, and all the stars to fireflies.
We would lay under a stone a waxen shape
The wind blows eastward;
His voice is silver and gold.
And seek their fullness upon the hills.
Perchance I may drowse, and drowsing
First God
Has builded stone upon stone.
I bid you see your glory and mine,
In our eyes is the vision that turns mans soul to flame,
The fame of poets and the honor of dreamers and saints;
Hold your importunate cry,
And unto what space direct thy eagerness?
And only silence visits her womb,
For the wind crowds my nostrils with the odors of dead things.
Oh, lofty dreaming brother,
And pierces the sky,
It is a wild assault that hushes you to your awakening.
First God
Brothers, my strange brothers,
Like thee I have kneaded the clay and fashioned it to breathing fo99lib•netrms
My heart longs for what my heart conceives not,
And thou art terrible.
The starless veil of prying and questioning
And like foul breath of the pit
Your hand upholds his destiny.
First God
Silent is thy face,
From sea to mountain
First God
Flame flowers at the breasts of the sky.
It is a new dawn unto the earth,
And a human voice will throb within my voice.
The white and green of love beside a lake,
Love is our lord and master.
Return to us from times dim borderland!
To pour life exhausted from her breast;
Let my soul be serene this night.
Between horizon and horizon.
And foul is the honey to your lips.
Second God
And garments the body of a girl with beating waves.
His voice shakes the forest
Second God
And then to lay him low,
And the glory of man begins
Even now, while you are muttering and rumbling,
His lyre is gold and ebony.
And let me be content awhile.
What shifting of worlds, what new purpose in the heavens,
And all that is man shall come upon the gods eternal board!
Whose secret keepeth night from morning?
And all that shall be, inviteth not my soul.
Behold, man and woman,
Thrice deep the youth is singing,
And vanish like a wasted sun;
I would make serene your clouded sphere;
And giveth it more desire.
Heavily does it hang upon the air,
And the potter turns his wheel unaware;
I could have met it with patience.
And against all dark spirits we guarded the flower.
And be no more;
From the angry element we shielded the bud,
In the passion of a man and a maid.
But we, the sleepless and the knowing,
Like dawn my soul rises within me
My heart casts out a perishing wrack of man and earth.
Be content and let the dreaming go.
And on to triumph.
And their heads rose in majesty above the world.
Their voices rolled over the plains.
Third God
Could I but strip my divinity of its purpose
And from withered hands receive my eternity.
Their hearts appeased with young souls,
And high beyond mans furtherest hope
I will not look downward.
But unto that that rises beyond my reach I would arise.
We are released from guessing and from chance.
Could I but be consumed and pass from times memory
And then to pluck it when the storm laughs in the forest;
A god is slain within me.
Yet you would grudge yourself a raiment.
And yours the dark thread and the light,
Oh my soul, my soul,
I would turn my face to the scentless north.
See how the east wind dances with her dancing feet,
And now she seeks the singer.
What dream dreamt we upon the height,
We, upon the heights, in mans sleep dream our dreams.
Nay, you would bring to my weary heart
Like thee I have kindled the dark depths of beginning life
What thought gave we to the wind
And we are the purple breast,
Oh, the affliction of knowing,
We are but gods holding a world and held by it,
Like thee I have summoned spring and laid the beauty thereof
And the unknown clad with moving mist
Does dawn hold the heart of night unto her heart?
Could I but lose the primal aim
Yea, in your own soul your Redeemer lies asleep,
Eternal Altar! Wouldst thou indeed this night
The blind cry of the infant that pierces the naked night,
Third God
But the muffled drum and leads the long procession of sweet uncertainty
If the gods raise it not to their mouths.
This and all is wiped away
Only to long for dust, and to fall down with longing unto dust,
And mine eyes pursued their own image in slumbering waters;
To face the four winds with a head crowned and high,
Second God
Nor the crumbling of desire
I, immortal, made man a passing shadow;
And yours the purple and the gold.
You invoke the unknown,
And infuse his days with visions of blissful nights,
The pain of child-bearing and the agony of childbirth,
The grape of mournful days, and days of terror and shame.
Nor to erase one.
They who are conquered by love,
And with thine own tears thou wouldst quench thy thirst;
Manhood made free from the sod,
Our soul, even the soul of life, your soul and mine,
Ye sovereigns who would govern the above world and the world beneath,
The passion of stern manhood, and the wisdom of old age;
A girl is dancing to the moon,
And betwixt his joy and his pain
It stretches ever to another dawn.
Through man desiring the golden hours of mans destiny.
A vine that creeps in dust beneath the feet of deathless death.
Oh my brothers, my heedless brothers,
But the skies are silent above thee,
Let the singer cry, and let the dancer whirl her feet
Then they spoke, and like distant thunder
For even as you have burdened me with life
Even so as bread fo gods shall man taste godhead.
And the day brings thee no fruit.
What giant sun warmed your bosom
To sow the seed and to watch it thrust through the soil;
To make his fancy like the eagle of the mountain,
And scatters the slumbering of earth.
Whose tune the remembering ear arrests
Love is youth with chains broken,
We urge his days to part from the valley of twilights
A creature bred on hunger and made food for hungry gods.
The lark calls to the lark,
I would not move a hand to create a world
In silence they gaze the one upon the other.
Nor is it flesh that takes arms against the spirit.
It is the odor of mortality parching upon its own faint flame.
And unto earth came life, and unto life came the spirit, the winged melody of the universe. And we ruled life and spirit, and none save us knew the measure of the years nor the weight of years nebulous dreams, till we, at noontide of the seventh aeon, gave the sea in marriage to the sun.
But you would not do this, were it in your power.
In thy hunger thou preyest upon thyself,
Third God
And wherefore spread you your cloud in trackless fields and desolate,
In white ecstacy.
And through the days of seasonless years
Is singing his heart to the night.
I would counsel you.
To tremulous faith in us, the unvisited and the unknown.
With foretaste of promised delight!
Immortal and mortal, twin rivers calling to the sea.
What is there to behold
Who shall behold our shining if mans eye is blinded with night?
In the purple mist of the first dawn.
Rivers ran about their feet;
My heart thirsts, yet I would not drink the faint blood of a feeble race,
The sacred loom is given you,
And in clay let it find its end.
First God
And lend your versed fingers to an idle eternity.
I would dissolve myself afar from your vision,
Time maketh our listening more certain,
But love shall stay,
The bee hums harshly in your ears,
I would take the starry way for a bow,
Stand even now in a shy half-embrace.
A day not yet achieved in your eyes or mine,
But my self love is limitless and without measure.
I would not live could I but die,
And the burdened sobs of passion unspent;
Nay, unto eternity unmoulded I would give my hands,
First God
The eye of purpose half-born;
The girl has heard the song.
Weighed is thine anchor and thy wings would spread,
Second God
It offends my senses.
And will you wake with lifes second dawn
Oh my mateless soul,
And what is love,
Which we have laid upon the world;
So are gods to gods.
That he might bow before us,
When his aimless breath is sucked by gods hallowed lips.
Unto you and unto me.
It is a fragment of ourselves returning,
And that is the secret of our being.
To another slow agony?
About her feet a thousand wings.
To girdle his nights with dreams of higher days,
Second God
And to untrodden fields assign my feet.
Must my soul needs to be a sea whose currents forever confound one another,
To raise his soul high above the firmament
Brothers, my dreaded brothers,
The mist floated across their breasts,
First God
And shining with the light of heaven deeper than our heaven.
Which your hand intertwined with ours
A god for sacrifice?
I heed, and I have measured the call,
The beauty that we have sought from the beginning
When the night of the twelfth aeon fell,
A voice in rapture calleth you and me.
That I may erase your earth-clinging memory from the earth?
Love rebels not.
I could not but choose the hardest way;
And the bridegroom from the sunset.
And summon man from sterile peace to fertile strife
Vain is the waking and empty is the sleep,
Like rivers let us flow to ocean
Your feud is but the sounding of an Ancient Lyre
And beauty filling our hands to shame our lips.
We shall pass into the twilight;
And made watchful the night?
For deaf is the ear of the infinite,
And whose hand is upon our world?
Perchance to wake to the dawn of another world.
And the comets for arrows,
That shall claim thee?
Calls to the grave.
The dancers feet are drunk with songs.
It only leaves the trodden way of ancient destinies for the sacred grove,
Third God
When out of chaos came the earth, and we, sons of the beginning, beheld each other in the lustless light, we breathed the first hushed, tremulous sound that quickened the currents of air and sea.
Who has woven this web of scarlet and white?
Now then, I come, and coming I offer up
Oh yesterday, dead yesterday,
Soul to soul they find the soul of life,
Or the sky where the warring winds turn hurricane?
Man is born to bondage,
But love is beyond our questioning,
Brothers, my solemn brothers,
But only in the ear.
In haste to sow again the dreaming furrow?
To give me birth?
We are but twilights ever rising and ever fading
A day too vast for recording.
Aye, man is meat for gods!
That woke the drowsing valley
And like doves her hands fly upward.
Though my yesterday died in child-birth
And his love trodden courses are rivers, to the sea of our desires.
Only doubt in mortal hushes the sound.
This vigil of guiding the day unto twilight,
And again form mountain to the sea,
The splendour of kings and the triumph of warriors,
Save where self is wedded to self,
But how shall I?
I would breathe it.
But upward the eagle soars,
That I may bring you to judgment?
First God
You would not turn away your face from the need in his eyes.
Third God
And now haunts our hands and lips for more fragrance.
And between us and boundless eternity
Whose heart shall echo our voice if the human heart is deafened with dust?
And the ceaseless moan of the seas exhausts my sleep.
There is no emptiness between call and call,
Man is food for the gods,
Panther-like she slips with subtle steps
And though equal we are in power and judgement,
To their immutable resemblance;
First God
I would exhaust myself to emptiness.
Third God
We have outsoared the doubt.
I would command my spirit.
Behold our sacred purpose now enthroned,
That crept out of my dripping fingers unto the marshes and the hills.
And as the mute grain turns to love songs when swallowed by the nightingale,
But not asleep.
What super-god caught you in your flight
Second God
And I beseech you hear his song.
Behold the unweaned children of your love.
And now that our vine hath yielded the grape
And what hope is there for thee and me?
Earth gods, my brothers,
Love in a garden or in the desert untrodden,
Were I man, a blind fragment,
Self-weary, who would unleash your temper with speech
And turned his mute fear of things unseen
It is the inflamed fragrance of brooding life
Ventures with lyre and sword.
And parent creatures for our unborn tomorrow?
Or shall the sea heed the bodies of her dead?
Governing the breath that began with his mothers crying,
Through rustling vine and fern.
We pause not nor do we wait for thought.
And give it strength to nestle its own life,
She sees his raptured face.
For night gathers not her dew into thy cup,
And now I yield.
But you hear only your own words.
Behold this is man!
Nor tarries to hear the song.
The blessed forge burns,
Second God (Always unhearing)
Like thee I have led man from shrine to shrine,
And lash our orb with thunderings!
And leads him to exalted loneliness and rebellious prophecy,
Unlace your feet from no-where and no-when,
In the yielding of a spirit that sings to a body that dances.
But you and I are neither human,
All that is human counts for naught if human it remain;
Your weariness is but ambition.
The flaming breath of youth tormented,
And love outsoars our song.
To call the flower from its hiding place
We would hold in our hands a white flame
And this timeless measuring of time.
And the art to weave the fabric.
Brothers, my mighty brothers,
And all the seas be stagnant with the slain,
Brothers, my august brothers,
And ours the sovereignty he proclaims,
Discharged the plains to hill and vale,
Their thirst quenched by blood,
Appeared upon the mountains.
That he may not forget his yesterday.
All this have I done, and more.
That they might renounce self
Man the faint hearted, overbold by our purpose,
Forbear and look down upon the world.