He is jealous, still, of the poet's world,
How greedily life reveals more life
And dreams resolve to loftier dreaming,
The ideal still at large from the common will
That takes the Gods from their temples
And calls their pillars decrepit.
He scoffs
At the daemon of words
That bursts from this truth
That it could be this misleading
And yet so beautiful
To rise from its grave like flowers never do
And fill the air with bewitching confusion.
When you say you are extinguished by others
You mean you are exactly like us,
And when you still the dim figures of translucent realms
Your sadness is not that it passes,
But that it's not seen
Except in a half-life of ghost.
But you
Were there before posterity,
When it mattered what others thought,
Before the cold alabaster brought a glow
No one could touch ...
The sigil of a lunatic
In love with what is not,
Who suffered at the distance
Between your eyes and what you saw,
Your grasp and the words you wrote,
What spilled out from the failure of prayers ...
How dare you label his dark universe
As a surfeit of stars?
