Poliphilo's Dream

 W.B YEATS

 

The lactating stars inside his heart instigated the will to write,

He sank below a bed of grass, and away, he was out of sight

 

Voice. Where does my heart reside?

 

The Sun has inherited the scales of Ouroboros.

And it holds the weight of a Moon’s spurn loss!

She beams luminescence upon the shadow’s dross

And bestows light to all life from bird and moss;

A silver Dawn, too familiar to be true, honed Plato’s dew

Into twinkling reflections of abnegation, and celestial,

From Star to Stone, from ear to nose, from trunk to pew;

And I roamed with intent, as the hollowed-chest beastial.

 

Voice. Where does my heart reside?

 

The forest hummed the melody of Eleazer’s strophe.

Every swaying flower knew the tune, or two, or three

And the harp-winged butterflies fluttered Apollo’s fee;

The undergrowth wore the wood of caduceus’ trophy

Spines of filament arched like bows, wrinkles scathed the land

My rage of love had burnt to ash, my sorrow to black coins,

Small black mirrors, small black eyes— I held them tightly in my hand.

The impatient dead within my waist no longer danced upon my loins.

 

Voice. Where does my heart reside?

 

Ah! The Sun’s rays spitefully burn and reflect,

Each beam a thought, a conflagration of intellect

Upon sweat and tears, to no affect

On Love’s dreariness. I slouch next to a slough and genuflect

Neither to pray or to prey upon a Lord

But to release some sort of heat:

My knees are consecrated, and fade before Sato’s sword

I bow to Somnus, and shed skin from my feet.

 

                              I

 

The lactating stars inside his heart instigated the will to write,

He sank below a bed of grass, and away, he was out of sight

 

Voice. Where does my heart reside?

 

The Moon glows phosphorous, a fiery tortoise shell,

My mind’s eye crinkles to a pulping stone,

And I am ever closer to that artist’s hell

That has plagued all men, that has made porcelain from bone

For fools to wear: enwrought in intellects of gold, silver and emerald.

But those statues of scholarly temper have no stand here,

Not in their bodily wisdom nor in their herald,

They are thaws in burning chalices, on minds they adhere.

 

Voice. Where does my heart reside?

 

My head has hardened unto clay,

And every thought has darkened unto grey,

Each finger to shape for contemplation;

I have found no love through rumination.

My pilgrimage of silenced roses red and white

Has led me to an ethereal glade scarred by a stream

Where by three masked nymphs lie in light,

Idly lined in the divine rib-bone carvings of a dream.

 

Voice. Where does my heart reside?

 

The 3 women giggled and arose at once, lining to a filed gallery

Of painted busts— emerald, gold, silver, soft ash and mercury;

Then came one, by one came, in masks of ancient gold,

That of Greek foundations told.

They sat me down, alone, by a stained fountain-font

In the centre, a statue of Venus was burning ever less,

Her thighs throbbed in golden blood, my heart gaunt

As each bubble popped and trickled into evanesce.

 

                                 I I

 

A nymph came forth, the mask of Plotinus

‘I am Plotinus, Seraphim of wisdom,

The heart you seek beats in a Kingdom

Where all burns in perichoretic rhythm

And all man is in a solitude of freedom;

Though your feet and loins have receded

And your head and heart deteriorated,

The fair love of your will is yet conceded:

Be judicious and relinquish all faith seeded,

Surrender to the art for which your vision bled’

He placed a warm finger above my brow,

And I fell deeper to the idle vow

I pledged besides the slough.

 

                                I I I

 

The lactating stars inside his heart instigated the will to write,

He sank below a bed of grass, and away, he was out of sight

 

Voice. Where does my heart reside?

 

And under the winds breath I was credulous

My vessel had landed ashore, my sedulous

Excursion for my love’s heart was given birth

And I had awoken against her breasted hearth.

The beneficiaries had been collected, the black eyes

Of sorrow had been blessed unto my opal flesh

And I, without sight, with saw the fated gyres;

The ink-mouthed children were released from the crèche,

All passion and celestial reframe became one;

Though it burns, wasn’t this a heavenly thought?

I flocked to the Godhead Sun.

Had I been beguiled by what the wisdom brought?

Ah! This is what fashioned my youth’s purple heart!

But-- I arch for a kiss against my mother-lover

And feel the kindred warmth of my soul-reason’s start;

But her carmine lips disperse, sizzling into another;

From air, to a raging fire, my sweet Polita!

Her hands struck one, and melted onto the ground

And out rose the fiery woman, Hestia!

Her touch burns, my old age’s wild youth has been found!

Her heart blossoms from a red-white rose to a golden flower

And my sorrow, rage, skin, intellect and soul withers to a shower

Of dust. I rise with a golden bow, as fire, as air, as a woman’s sight

Into the oneness of our Muse’s light.

 

 

And when I awoke, I had no will to write.