the butterfly

A butterfly I saw today,

Whose trembling wings had sparked the grey

That seeped through the barren building

From the toil to its dark spoils wielding.

Delicate, like its ridden ray,

The insect shed a bright array

That seemed to be of sulphur made,

As it gushed forth th' immobile shade,

Entrapped between the boresome bricks,

With the ferment of fire-blown winks,

That sprinkled on incensing pigments

The wafts of summer' ripe scents,

Strewing with its kindled breast

The ruby drops of a streaked vest

That slit the soot in the chinks shell

With rooting blood appeasing hell.

But then, just as it had dispatched

The hours with repetition parched,

The friend went, leaving to hope

I might again with it elope. 

Within that moment's sudden flight,

A memory's fugue whined its plight:

When was that this same present beauty

Had me bow and vow my duty

That I its wonders would retrieve,

On trees and streets and all that live

Till in the greets of its return

It spills the words that were its urn?

It had been when my worst I was,

Staggering for help among the buzz

That burst from thoughts in their unstable

Permanence, making me unable

To pour life into a flown image

That in the quakes of its shed cleavage

Wouldn't wane the trails wherein still shone

The healing awe I couldn't clasp alone.

Thus, no more sturdy than a stone,

I sunk through whirls that from me did

Withdraw the forms of my rest rid,

And neither falterèd nor strove 

At the dim throes that through me wove

The skies with petals showering

The songs of their arcs lowering,

That dipped their fall in th' palms of all

To gird th'emotions' pedestal.

Now, hoisted up by these two moments,

And the compass that their winding conquests,

I can anoint my pensive weights

To the light cocoons where psyche slates

The coals of the stars-brimming air,

For bracing in a dream-crammed stare 

The tides that from the moon's rein err

Th'imbued shoal, whose enamoured phases

Swell thoughts with their metamorphosis,

Our sympathetic, true, catharsis.

Then with the pouring of a far kiss,

Even on the dying building

There hatch the freckles of their gilding 

Their windows with the wings of my 

Mind-inspirèd butterfly.