The Lucifer Cantos 7/13

VII

I cannot rest
and dream my dreams
on warm white sands,
but I shall walk the world
until I reach the sun.

As grains of wheat held in a hand
flow streaming from a grip of stone,
so I, in time and cant, am blown
across an ancient, braver land
on winds of bone.

*

Come: sail the mists that bury glooms
and bind the shrouds of Easter blooms,
in frozen haar of whitest light;
unveil the dust-occluded sight.

*

In fear of death, the quiet saint
or sage is dying all his life.

In empires of eternal form,
he never lived, a marble bust,

in solemn air, august in strife,
inert and noble, wreathed in gilt

of autumn leaves. Beneath the sheet
his laurels wilt in summer heat.

*

Come: steal the golden bow, let fly
an arcane arrow in the sky,
to track Saharan desert light,
and pierce the sun with ancient night.

*

I cannot rest
and dream my dreams
on warm white sands,
but high and dextrous, low
and sinister, must soar.

Across the barren land they’ve tilled,
let me, I trill, be ever killed
and, on the monument they build,
carve, I shall walk the world
until I reach the sun.