The brightness of arms

 

The brightness of arms

What more is there to love
Than I have loved, that we have loved?
The lips of creation are bright

Time floods with senseless syllables
Images, identities, centuries full of
The lust of all approaching feeling
A haunted youth of this world’s
Agony of moisture, and trembling of suns

A blur of archives and smiles
Deaths and glories and forests burning
And this first clear pure canto

Of all we have ever felt, is it glittering now
A memory renacted, an augmented reality?
Earth is more than that, bathed in a body
Of oxygen and water, a blanket of snow
She’s the leaping of lakes and the dreaming of clouds

And the impersonal cities towering
Above the people, how they nameless walk
Naked into their fate, blind as circuits

What more is there to do
Than I have done, than we do by habit?
Burying ourselves in raising children
Escaping the world in our work.
We’ve called this living, but I am not sure

I am not sure we compose,
That we compose enough peace in peace time
And altruism in prosperity time

And art in dream time
And hope in harsh times.
I guess we’ll see, I guess on wings more subtle
Than mercy and compassion, I’ll find
Identity naked again, ahead of spirituality.