Minotaur Exposed
For John Menapace
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
—T. S. Eliot
Think often of my eyes:
Through one forged of
steel & glass
I view the world
Eye awakens:
Not the water, but
a patterned energy made visible*
by it:
Silence
music reaches for:
Still point where
notes gather pattern
path meets pathway
———
If there were a place
I could enter
I would enter it finding
the door in the wall the wall itself
This side that side
vanishes
Endlessly here endlessly not
———
A door opens:
Neither somewhere nor nowhere
On the other side either
something or nothing
Close your eyes you
hear it
Open them
Is it gone?
———
I shape wood into mist
I make grasses into water
I grow my hair long
& white
The eye looking straight on hears
the zigzag electric
in the upright thing
———
There! A crack
in the wall
A moment's verdant skin
dense with ceremony & resemblances
Green will out
I leave my chambered room
Yet another nautilus summons me
Death's river beyond the courageous door
Living door beyond the tranquil world
Setting forth even lazy boats startle in anticipation
———
Receive me O compassionate
entrances & exits!
O world made contradictory & real
by time, men, & wander arriving!
I knew you even before my eye
I knew you before the first leap scarred my heart
When love thundered through the corridors
& brutality relinquished me
A Holiness in the wor(l)d
Enter into its courts with praise
*Hugh Kenner