From the Cosmos, A Blade
A Poem
From the Cosmos, A Blade
What then is man, that he has wound his end
Around the little finger of fate’s left hand.
That chance, his mistress, comes and goes at whim,
That Fortune revokes the jewels of fleeting wealth.
And what desire can be enough for man,
For who, inside, is cosmic type reflected,
His soul is boundless, ravenous flight,
As like a cistern that thirsts the swelling sea,
And never quenched, can swallow raging suns;
And like a pepper has infernal fruit,
Sun-flesh singes man’s feeble lip and tongue,
The bite, in secret part, is blistering seeds,
So more heat does he crave to purge his soul.
His spine like steel folded a thousandfold
By opportunity to feast the earth,
And quickly thrust, his metal roaring hot,
Into the water held beneath the world,
Is quenched by means that float beyond his thirst,
And so baptized by the cosmos, emerges
A dull edged blade, awaiting stone to sharp
His sides, that he, at last, may cut himself free
From hunger which lusts orbits of false gods,
And be at rest, revolving in celestial peace.



One of my favorites of yours. Well done!
Milton with a drawl. Well-deserving the “smithery” of “wordsmithery.”
The premise strikes me as eastern, no? Man turns his infinite energy against his infinite desire, thus he is his own object. “What then is man.” Negation. Simple as. But I ask you, “who, then is [each] man?”