Virgil Redivivus

                                                        

Awake at midnight till midnight sleeps

You keep your vigil till Virgil weeps,

Till lines of poetry waver and blur

Borne away on memory’s stream

Substituted by lush, deep-rooted

Water plants that wash your dream.

Sitting up till the middle of the night,

Like staying awake on a transatlantic flight,

Superstitious, surreptitious, sly,

You keep the plane up in the sky;

Just so, you watch over the child, the friend,

Who depend on your knowing to worry about them.

What you dream I do not know,

I hope your dreams are storied though:

Dreams in sepia of times gone by,

Or colorful scenes of seascape and sky,

Dreams retold in the languages you love,

Dreams that filter starlight softly from above.

*    *    *   *    *

That old roll of film in your pocket

Is undeveloped Truth

Evidence of the life you lived:

Incontrovertible proof

Proof of life

A reading

Of your vital signs:

Your part in earthly

Joy and strife

In the heeding

And superseding

Of destiny’s designs.

The Life Force

Once made questionable

By force of circumstance

Now rendered incontestable

By persistent

Happenstance

Your Magna Anima

Incontestable,

Quixotic,

Exotic,

Of variations
Nestable,

Too large

To be

Testable:

Too multicolored,

Multivalent,

Too perennially

Suggestible

That animated anima,

Crafty, smart,

Stated its hypothesis

Right from the start,

Directed its experiment

Straight from the heart:
To balance 
The heaviness of courage,

With the lightness of art

To measure

Solemnity and levity,

Gravity and grace,

Sustainable brevity:

Inner space,

Charm and relativity

Caught up in the dance:

Versatile proclivities:

Proof against chance

To weigh the light

And the heavy still:

Art and courage,

Courage and Art:

The feathery lightness

Of the soaring heart.

Banners bespoken

Unfurled, betoken

Crucial pain,

Vital pleasures

By craft reformed,

By Time’s crucible

Transformed:

Treasures of Time

Placed in the scales

Salience of radiance,

Resilience of brilliance

Charting of the elements,

Relevance

Of symbols, signs

To the finely wrought

Invention:

Free intention

Of the harnessed mind;

Placed in the balance

Placed alongside

The harrowing

Of expedience,

Fallout from

Obedience

To History’s pitiless crimes;

The daunting uphill climb,

Steepness of grades,

Of gradients;

Alongside all that radiance

And the failure of Goodness

To protect;

And the coward’s reluctance

To accept

Evil’s comeuppance;

Placed in the balance

The vital talents

There from the start:

Laughter and grace,

Wisdom’s fine trace,

The sacred space

Of the

Tender heart,
And the guarded shrine

Of the unbroken mind

*    *    *   *    *

A rush of wings:

Time’s Jaguar now,

Roaring in the future with

Future perfect in tow––

Not the only time

Your shoulder has been brushed

By wings reviving signs

Of the shadows time crushed––

Shadow men who deify division:

“Our side, your side,

Between them––derision.”

Shadow men who rail against revels,

Make private pacts with part-time devils,

Form factions, schisms, cliques, cabals:

Big-enders and Little-enders all:

Shades who make legends of unlived lives,

Shades whose love is retrospection
For women whose fading reflections –

Like thousands of slipping silken shawls –

Gently fall

                   Cover all

Darkening the deepening pools

Of young girls’ wondering eyes

                       

*    *    *   *    *

All too real for sainting

Too practical for sin

Laughing or tending or painting

Doors swing wide when you walk in

Surely

You will keep your wits about you

Life won’t want to live without you

You will have bright visions

Of the places on the maps––

No image in your archive

Vague or abstract

And when you think

You can foresee

Time’s sleeve raveling,

An end to traveling,

Recall the prophecy

At the end of the

Odyssey.

You too may visit

Cities of men

Till you come upon

A curious race

In an inland place:

Men neither bad nor good

Who eat no salt

On their food;

And if a walking stick you bring,

It may be seen

As some other thing;

And if your oar is mistaken

For a winnowing fan,

Make a libation,

Bless the land,

Take a vacation,

Freed from story,

Freed from the ghosts 
Of history.

Leaving magic spells behind

You shall know

The quiet mind

You’ll turn away

Just in time

From winking Madonnas

In their prime

From clockwork soldiers

Whose hollow eyes you know,

From crumbling walls of Jericho

*    *    *   *    *

Emerged at last

From the tortuous maze

You’ll set aside your

Book of Days

You’ll gently close

Your Book of Hours

Breathe the air

Exult in flowers:

Flowers with stamens

Cerulean:

Blue translucent,  

Fugitive hue;
 

Flowers with petals

Lush like the lazuli feathers

Of a camouflaged bunting,

Hidden from view;

Petals the color of

The sky, the sea,

Color of the breezes

Moving the tops of trees;

Color of tiny traces

Left by a water strider’s feet;

Of artisanal glazes

Daubed on slim ceramic vases;

Blue of the nightingale’s

Purest note

Reprised in the opera

Stravinsky wrote––

You’ll set aside your

Book of Days,

Gently close

Your Book of Hours,

Resolve

To play it as it lays

Whether by Time

Bereft or empowered.

*    *    *   *    *

Released from obsession’s

2D mind games

– Barely affected –

By having to pace

First right, then left,

Through the Minotaur’s maze,

You will find yourself

Amazed

To see the full-blown Promise

Vectored and projected:

The future

Not idealized,

But realized:

Lively ascension

In three or four

Richly scored

Harmonic

Dimensions.

As Life uncoils

Like the time-lapse tale

Of one glorious

Humming

Thrumming

Rose

                                                   

Wrapped around

Swathed in surround

Of ambient

Amber light

You will need

No Special Training

In Insight