As Asp Cannot Be Sage

I've been on a Keats binge.

Wild haunts this phantasm dressed in night,

Where speckling stars have ceased to shine,

And corvids lay their feathers down,

At maws of mossy caves, despite,

The acrid air of heirs betrothed to silence.

Eyes glinting as a ghoulish flame,

Your name, your name repeats, and I,

Here I am lost, tangled in the briar,

Keeping time by pulse alone -- deafening,

Though, lofty rises treeline; tide,

A thousand needles free of sound,

Viridescent, each keeping secrets sharp,

Unfit for ears of man or beast or bird,

Only may they relay them to the aether,

For they see all without an eye,

A century, a moment,

To a cypress would it matter?

She has bedded herself in soil rich,

To kiss the haughty cliff, indefinitely,

Letting seabreeze jewel her hair,

And sighs of zephyrs sing her praise,

She rests as I would wish, in your name,

Eternally, unshaken by the coming storm,

Oh sing, sing low again to me,

Make time and space dissolve as ash,

And summon me from out the sea,

The trees, the cave -- as Plato did his pupils,

As Pythia brought to her grave,

Or Orpheus to Eurydice wakes,

Colour me in these breaths like Spring,

Bringing sun to lantern’s shade,

As cast, a dizzying array of hues,

All harlequin as in Marrakech,

Or Sainte-Chapelle ‘neath Gothic arch,

Vivid are the panes you paint,

As if all beauty knew your tongue,

Call to me, from your horizon,

And I will still this muted fate,

That waited on a chance to show,

This flame as Rome’s, to give it name,

To subject it to awe and grace such in return,

Where corvids lay their feathers down,

At maws of mossy caves, despite…

The world turns, but you and I,

Are stilled within a haze, a glimmer,

As myth cannot be caged,

As asp cannot be sage.