Vulnerability
—Seeking Still—
The stars have lost the tremor of their fire,
the aspens, wind-wed, scarcely stir a leaf;
the sea keeps blue, yet azure's old attire
seems banish'd from the deep, past all belief.
The butterflies still skim the lucent air,
yet some lost eidolon of flight is gone;
the hummingbirds, once liquid choirs, blare
like brazen bells beneath a witless dawn.
I touch the rain—it glimmers, yet is dry;
the lilies breathe a wan, funereal sweet;
and honey, once the sun's own gold, turns awry,
lies rotting 'neath the noontide's brazen heat.
What if the world hath not grown strange at all—
but I became the stranger at thy fall?
I muse if mine own wits have wander'd wide,
or some eldritch derangement veils my sight;
for thou hast vanish'd, leaving naught beside
but all the world bereft of inward light.
The moon still climbs above the chimneys' smoke,
and weary men bar fast their doors at night;
yet every common thing seems somehow broke,
as though each thing had outliv'd its ancient right.
Perhaps thy presence was the secret art
by which the visible became benign;
and now the world still beats, yet lacks the heart
that taught its mute immensities to shine.
And shouldst thou never turn thy face to mine,
I'll call this ruined universe—divine.
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