Ode on Bipolar Mania

I.

O Bacchanalia! O wild Mania,                              
     what be this ecstatic spirit of God!?           
To be transported grants Arcadia:                             
     but this awareness, this sense, feels so odd.         
O thou soul! What mad symmetry of thought!         
   This sudden, unbidden, psychic climax                             
      of the mind captivates with raptured thrill.                           
Calliope! thou hast me overwrought:                             
   whence sing this manic grammar and syntax,      
      this wondrous expression that melts doom's chill?           


II.

Thou rhapsody! Thou monumental bliss!             
     What euphoria overwhelms the brain?                     
With eloquent Calliope's moist kiss,
     thrilled ravishment uplifts the head's domain.
O Joy! Pure, pure Joy! Intense happiness,
    with rapture mingled, revives the psyche
        with radiant delusion of the mind;
then glee that transcends desire to express,
    like supernatural being whose frenzy
        all at once overpowers, strikes me blind! 


III.

Erelong the psyche is madly distress'd,
     for the diseased become wildly deranged         
by dire imbalance of the brain! Oppress'd,
     with bipolar Mania unestranged,               
I wane with her vanishing servitude;
     for in her wake she leaves a deadly unrest,                         
          which perforce enjoin the pallid mortician. 
     For mental psychosis damns the unblest:        
but with souls (where with angels devils feud)
          God operates as the Divine Physician.
Copyright © | Year Posted 2021

Poem

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