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MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM
By Quentin Smith
The grapes are bleeding in the moon. A shadow
Is frozen against the tree. Darkness is wound around
The bark; a slack rope of violet night
tightens gently around the trunk. The purple light
Drops softly on the ground among the leaves.
Fallen grapes sink with quiet funerals in the meadow.
Over the hill a blue lake does not stir;
An ashen light shines faintly upwards
To the stars. A white winged eagle
Reigns motionless from silvered
Branches of the forest’s shore.
Arcane crosses of twigs vanish in tiny pools on the surface glow.
Glassy stones freeze in a crossline of green suns.
Blackness buoys around their dead marble edges.
The light does not refract over the horizon . . . lost among no echoes.
Green star eyes lie shatterered on the mirrors of life-giving stones.
Is it good, this infinitely detailed Presence?
A gigantic clearness in which all move as one,
A clearness where all lose their daily meanings,
And shine without color inside everyone’s darkness?
Or are the words “good” and “bad” too small
To reach out to this interwining of stranger beings?
1974 and 2002 |