The Birth of Fire
In the killing fields of Desire, what a brilliant grave I made
like the lightning and the winds, I vanished into wild creations
This necessary erasure, daybreak, a pandemonium of vanishing delight
Desire what a vain design the void—the threat of devouring revives me to Being
revenant of heaven, behold your sunrises and their burning corridors of fire
Divine architect, in your starlit evenings, I unravel from desire’s ancient sorceries
God once I was your possession before the mazes of the dark atlas claimed me
Metamorphosis from the seasons of dreaming, I woke with fragile wings
I witnessed the slaughter of sacred lambs in gossamer grasses, great empires falling silent, the birth of fire in my fingertips, poison in the sulfurous skies, argonauts roaming in low clouds and monsoons of moonlight, ordinary atrocity in your obsidian cities, mockingbirds decapitated by barbed wires, Prometheus reaping being, sleeping Ophelia surrendering to the waterlilies, the bloodmouths of hooked trout, the wreckage of winged bodies, mountains of black tar, devils in American fire prairies, crimson thorns being born in my body, neon gods in the Hollywood mornings, metropolis of opium and smoke, burning fields of marigolds, vales of eucalyptus blades, Madonna blossoming apocalypse, rapture in the fallen angels aerie, the wounded Godhead, clouds of restless locusts in burning dusk with their holy bloodlust, creation of chaos in interstellar darknesses, screaming cicadas in summer’s deep eternities (I heard the arias of their wings beating in the midsummer midnights), asps of decaying Paradise ascending to black meadows, the embers of a resurrected Earth
The violence! of desire! cries of songbirds echo in the starving eves
Maker of dark Heavens, possess me again, I am roped by shadows
The serpents do not sleep and the griefs do not leave
In spring moonrises, I witnessed the great devastations of your charred cities
Testaments of the fallen in desperate defiance do I resist your majesties
Who deserves Being? Seasons of dreaming, dark idolatries claimed me
The abomination! of dreams! razored diamonds in the void of my throat
Earth of ceaseless disasters, I witnessed your waning wastelands
Devotion in the crucible of the infinite, I am drowning in dreams again
You who named the stars of heaven in their black theaters, bear me from the wounded world
The grandeur! of dreams! Beauty, what a fragile sanctuary
I witnessed the rebirth of fire’s blazing bloodlines
This vanitas of suffering Eve severed from Heaven I indulged in ecstasy
Like the sun and her splendour I was sired in the wilderness of desire
How can I survive this life and its lethal beauty? How can it survive me?
