We rule an earth that is but microns thin,
you and I — we ride on our separate
hemispheres in a yinyang never-catch
pursuit — love in an endless chase of fear,
spinning and tiding a fevered planet.
A sleepless Titan, Kronos, grows within
grinds forehead and nostrils against the pane
of the mind’s mantle’s, world’s cool underside:
this shadow of a shadow shouts its name.
It thinks it is God, faith-fanged, it slobbers
souls’ marching orders, taboos and bans.
The reason’d Sphere is hard — a perfect tomb
for fiends, inquisitors, and catechists —
but now our bubble planet breaks apart
in demon tentacle arm-and-leg flex,
and simple Truth is lost to air.
I love in vain. You flee in terror’s thrall.
Gnarled old Kronos is loose in the world.
The Titan Thing, unchained, must have its lust
and, wrenching out its adamantine bars,
throws lovers aside, knocks thrones to rubble,
grinds genius back to idiot dust motes.
Its vacant eye usurps the dying stars.
I go to a place of black-hole exile.
There is not room enough for you and me
in bed with that rampaging deity.
God-love destroyed our love. God-love destroys
everything, a desolated cosmos.
So let us be both love and god
in one another’s worshiping.
Let us set up stock in Things As They Are
and sit beneath our own self-planted trees,
content in hand-grasps till every demon dies.
[Written circa 1967, revised and expanded 2018, revised and expanded again in May 2019.]
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