LXVII

For years I've been far out at sea, the ships
Have passed me by, but when I saw your lips
I knew there was some other history
I fathomed out the ancient mystery.
I know, my darling, that you cannot give
More than a little time, she did not live;
But I am living, living timelessly
Here in the mountains, actual and free;
There are no others on this continent
As wild as this, and yet so innocent;
The absence in my presence is the death
Of dying, and a shining angel's breath,
The inspiration of that Asian tome,
Bardo Thodol, that sends the spirits home.

LXVIII

To stay alive, just die before you die:
The body stops its indolent decay,
And age reverses slowly into youth
But only if you really die, in truth:
The dying is a yoga exercise
Of slow withdrawal of the self that lies,
Of observation of the floating breath
Until it stops, and there you have your death:
The breathless awe before the searing light
That blasts away perception. In this sight
All knowledge is subsumed, and love becomes
A solid state, beyond the hecatombs,
Beyond the grave, beyond control, the surge
Of life immortal in the demiurge.

LXIX

The other death, my love, is in your arms
It is the same, except in human terms
Requiring two to fuse the mind and lie
Unknowing with each other by and by;
The leap from flesh to cosmic transference
Requires long practice and some continence.
The usual hold is marriage, but the wise
May close this circuit beyond prying eyes
In such configurations as the stars
Assume in heaven, to old philosophers
Conjoining in their seasons severally
According to the music of the sea
Of brilliance. My light will only shine
To blind the world when I am yours, you, mine.

LXX

The gift is given and yet is always taken
Back by those ones who have yet to awaken:
You are the only one, yet you have more
Of lovers than the pebbles of the shore,
They are the grains of sand and you the tide
To wash their cares away, no mortal pride
Can hold against your glance, your whelming eyes
Hint at a thousand arcane mysteries;
I am alone, and yet I feel your pull,
A lunar shift so dark, so beautiful
It laves my heart away, my flesh becomes
Flotsam and jetsam in your current's dreams:
You touched me once, and now I cannot sleep
For being out of touch with your vast deep.

LXXI

There is no depth in flesh: these women think
They have you, but it's just another drink
Of salt and seeming, of a night or two,
A pastime to forget, the promise due
But never kept, the penetrated mind
Renewed but lost, the body left behind.
Their love is empty, but you cannot show
What fullness is. Repeatedly they go
To you or to another to be filled
With joyful distance, with a remote world,
A something that is nothing that they can
Retain, a little pleasure, just a man.
The present is your gift, but do they know
Where your heart is, and where your wishes go?

LXXII

I want your life, I want your life in death,
Your death in life to this, your wants beneath
Your stature, your despair, the long suspense
Of passion. In the making of intense
And present presence of a different joy,
I'd give you pleasures that do not destroy
The working out of art and of good sense.
But who is this I want? He is the prince
Of darkness and a gentleman, most free
With knowledge and the serpent in the tree
That shattered Eden. Demons speak to me
And tell me that you're lying with a lie
That does not know itself to be untrue,
The silly thing is quite in love with you.

LXXIII

It's kind of lonely here; my little life
Is full of difference. You have no wife;
I have no other, it is difficult
In my own absence to make presence felt;
I am engaged to the most abstract art
And this would keep us close but still apart;
You say you're old, but my three thousand years
Of arcane practice quietly appears
To make me older; here I make my gift,
Some undone sonnets with a Doppler shift;
I hope you will return to me in time
With more of interest than this little rhyme,
Though months may pass, and leave us separate
You seem to see my point. When do we mate?

LXXIV

Desire is narrative, it tells its tale
And starts with the Creation. Genesis
Begins with cosmic sex and then the fall
From Eden comes, then Judas with a kiss
Betrays the Christ as we betray our love
Most hurting what we most intend to keep,
The faith and trust that was so hard to give.
The words are fast exchanged that make us weep,
Some people even come to blows, the pain
Remains to colour future parodies,
The shocked conjunctions in a bed of brain
And preconceived endearments; sheets of lies
Extend the hope reflected from those acts
Which are the only contact with the facts.

LXXV

The facts of life and death are what I know;
I do not give myself to ignorance,
I've lost too much to gain this little show
Of paradox and objects of romance;
You suffer from the same horrendous vision
And make what lights you can from nothingness,
Quite free from any false conceptual poison,
Without a label on your real address;
This world for you's at poste restante, they leave
Their feelings and their wants at one remove,
You guard your peace and do not want to grieve
Much more for loss of one you used to love;
We are most equal in our difference,
The meeting of our minds is true in sense.

LXXVI

We are together in this paper lust,
This nothing that has something more to say
Than couples in domestic bliss that dust
Consumes. There is a clean sweep in this way
Of making love without the need for drink,
For blandishments and makeup, all the props
Are done away with in a sea of ink,
Of darkness that enlightens without trips
Or treatment. In this patterned poet's sigh
There is no aftermath, the safest sex
Is in the head, intentions do not lie
And touches of conceit do not leave tracks
Or bruises. In these tracts we can fulfill
Ourselves and yet be very separate still.

LXXVII

An act of love, this is an act of love
Which does not leave a nasty aftertaste
Of sad nostalgia felt at one remove,
The expense of spirit in a howling waste
Of shame. We can be friends and not believe
In that possession which is not possessed
By anyone at all, whilst millions grieve
For what they do not have, have never lost
But only wished for. Loving at the cost
Of losing self-respect and the delight
Of solitude whilst haunted by the ghost
Of absent presence does not shed much light
On truth and reason, who we really are;
But still I love you, love you from afar.

LXXIX

But what I want is what I cannot have;
A place within your life which now is taken
By someone else: I only can behave
And wait for closure. Openly mistaken,
But also in the right in the long term,
I do not care how long I have to wait,
Perception in this light does me no harm,
This is the anteroom to your estate
Where greatness gathers. Nothing mortal lasts,
All passions have their season, every fit
Of fondness has its winter, time insists
On passing, and our passing comes with it;
Before I vanish, I would give that gift
To you which never changes, does not shift.

LXXX

Your days have seasons, winter without drink,
And then a spring by sips, till vintage warms
The chill of emptiness, of those who think
Without the pap of hope. Your icy charms
Would frighten lesser souls and terrify
A clinging lover. I am highly trained
To give up everything, to sanctify
Release, am by repeated vows restrained
To this small present, do not pass me by;
I reach out from beyond your hopeless sense
Of fixed conditions, from my breaking free
Which has no limits, final innocence;
It is so cold there is no passion here
But only love, a love beyond despair.

LXXXI

Desire which is not wanted; we both have
Enough of this. Our meeting was not planned;
We are both free, these agonies enslave
The higher faculties, confine the mind;
The monastery that I bear within
These vaults of bone, cathedral for my song,
An Oriental cloister without sin
Rejects all preconception; that is wrong.
I therefore wait until you may reveal
Without a hindrance in the circumstance
Of conversation, what you really feel;
But this reality is not romance;
There is no future, I do not conceive
Of what I do not know, cannot believe.

LXXXII

So why then would I wait? Who have I seen
Or else imagined in you? Not a fool,
Not the deep drinker of more vintage wine
Than most can carry, not an alpha male,
And not an artist with an intellect
To shatter icons. It is more apart,
And closer to your truth, this dark effect,
This negative of you that takes my heart
And slows its beat. I know that you refuse,
That you disdain attachment. So do I,
It is a rule of conduct I abuse
Each time I see you, that you pass me by;
I know my own unknowing in your night,
Your hopelessness gives hope the second sight.

LXXXIII

I'll give you up, but I'll give up my all
To lie with you (to not exist) to lie
Beside you (and myself) and in your hands
Cease.
In the beginning we are free
And in the end, caught up in subtle dance
Are very free, as liberated sight
Makes brightly (darkly) touching innocence
(And not to know) what knowledge of the flesh
Reveals (undoes) in time (there is no time).
Afire, I am (and am not) in suspense,
Destroy, create new moment out of rhyme,
Do nothing (everything) to make good sense.
My appetites are absent, I no longer
Need anything at all but this great hunger.

LXXXIV

Yet you are distant so as not to break
My spirit, since you see me also, show
In little glints and frowns how my mistake
Deceives and yet is true. You wait to know
What beauty will reveal its evidence
From living in restraint. I cannot eat,
The fruit of knowledge is my sustenance,
And never has it tasted more complete.
The soul I lost from looking in your eyes
Is absent now in dangerous quantity,
The life I got from living with the wise
Is surging like a vast and stormy sea;
My form is empty, and my emptiness
Is being formal to your real address.

LXXXV

The life I got from living at great height,
This incandescent flame you see, is yours
To taste if there is time, a subtle light
That burns out sickness in the veins, the cause
Of my good health and fast delivery;
If there is time, I'll take you from your space
And set you, for a moment, somewhat free
To rise, not fall, into a greater grace
A very special bright intensity.
You'll not be sober when you come from this,
Elated from this drunkenness of mine,
This draught of nectar, of essential bliss
More hot than sex, more soft than any wine:
This is the ancient secret of the East,
The sacrifice of self at the love-feast.

LXXXVI

Those who are in bliss need nothing: neither food nor drink;
A little tea is sometimes pleasant. Resting
In inspiration, exhalation, meditation, introspection, calm,
Withdrawn and given to watching sexual fire
Be kindled at the second chakra, rise
To fill the stomach, feeding appetite,
To pulse within the heart, quenching desire,
Expanding and abolishing all ties,
Conditions of existence melting down,
To fuel the next ascent, into the throat,
Where language is defeated, overcome
And then to vision, the light-bringer's lies
Seared through. The incandescent darkness holds
The thousand things within it, and unfolds.

LXXXVII

No time for love, no space
for intercourse,
No food for thought, no flesh
To keep in touch
To love too much
And to refrain from lust
Consumed,
To hear your absence in divorce
From form and name,
to celebrate release
In death in life, in final, actual peace;
To burn in silence;
to become a flame
And to remember nothingness,
Desire
And infidelity, the music runs
From heart to heart
that you so well perform,
The vision that you bear has no decease
The nights that you will share are melodies,
And they are instruments
who are your lays
And I the vigil that will never cease.

Copyright © Charlotte Appleton 2003