

"For all I make, I mar..."
Fury of Achilles, Charles-Antoine Coypel
In Dark I must begin
in Fear and Chaos too that
no softly arch of noon
nor lengthy word of sage-buffoon
could break into those haunted tombs
and light with cheer the savage moves
that black and blessed womb.
Whatever I can think and will,
whatever I can say and feel around
with words like toppled heads a thousand
birds whose flashing wings once caused
a dreamy heart to sing before the glint
of mind demanded the illume of more
“internal things.”
For all I make, I mar
and see within the beauteous scar
that which should not have been
and throw myself to revise again
the rubbish upon the floor,
before proceeding to rubbish even more
in vain I seek to right the dying
limbs my once beloved lore.
Rationale will not save me from me
nor reason of a dozen kinds
nor logic of a hundred minds
but only the grotesque instability
of a forever-insolvent irrationality.
Yes, if me, myself, and I to last
in Dark I must begin and
and freeze into the pillared past
a present fear of vicious soul
of yore and yon the men in me
who seem so fond of war and quest
and vice and lack of love and mad of sense
who pursue it all for our own magnificence.
Death on a Pale Horse, Gustave Dore