Internal Things (re-edited)

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