Approaches
In the burning house
in a scattered country
you will see us rising
the shadow of wings
crossing your sunlight
obscuring the moon
as the red sky blossoms
in fire and confusion.
Do not say you awaited
the flight and the shadow
the first incandescence
of your villages:
0 do not say you expected
this fire, this turning,
the breath of the coming year
as it passes
above you and through you.
bearing no promise
no memory of grief and effacement.
Do not tell your children
that you understood
the explosion of air and light,
the last implausible burning
after the wings
had passed above you,
the red wind exploding
like fire in dry thistle.
They must not remember us,
so that when we return
our price is exacted
from copper to diamond,
and above your country
the thorn trees spread
over collapsing time
as the past and the future
close into single flame.
Dragonhoard
In the heart of the lair
lies the fortunate substances
lost in the incandescence of sapphire,
drowned in an attar of violets.
In the heart of the lair
in forgotten cloisters of granite down where a second darkness
covers the light carnelian ,
there in our midst, we imagine,
lie the stones of redemption
where we have relinquished them
to a light so brilliant
that after the days of sun
and the stars' corona,
the memory marks the eye
in its changed interior
where the color of light inverts
yellow remembered as violet green as red of the blood unveiled
as the blood we have spilled
over hearts and stones
as the last of the light assembles hard upon what we imagine
here in the marshes,
on wing in the early
and the blackening swamp
where the heart of the lair
is fixed and holy
speaking forever of miracles
because we remember it so.
The Language of Dragons
The language of dragons
is the sleep of magic.
Hard as agate
slick as quicksilver
cold barometer
of the brazen heart
and the destined wing.
Out of the country
twinned and murderous
in a spring of stars
let the word bind the body
to the wind of the senses
bind the invisible
nerve of the air
bind and loose
jess and unfetter
the blank and awaiting country
here in a season of hawks
and 0 may the word
upon word engender
past fear and sleep may it ride
limning the imagined
life of the planets
Gilean and Sirrion
book and flame
here at the Alchemist's Gate
where the sound of our singing assembles, dissembles,
weaving a veil over nothing.
Hymn of the Lair
The lair is the plan of the body,
the yearning of blood
in expectant country,
as over the desert
the lightning stalks
in the promise of promises.
The lair is a whisper of stars,
is the way we remember
the lapsed constellations,
forgetting the passage of years
as inclement time
shrinks to arrangements
of pearls in the dark
of our summoned caverns.
Let it never be said
that the country of dragons
is barren, is settled with specters,
now when the tangible
glitters around us,
the eggs hard as pearls,
the smell of acanthus,
the watery shift
of blue upon blue,
the arrangement of stars before us.
Now our heritage
rests in old vintages
wine of the dark
wine of the maple
wine of the cane
at the edge of the prospects,
and all of our children
harbored in stone,
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in a pure and invulnerable light
0 let them rise from that light
on a blue and immaculate wing,
let the violet sun
be their rising and falling,
and let them remember
past desert, past dark
past all definitions
of star and lightning,
let them remember
this place where the mind
bows down to the heart,
where the blood gives over
into the veins
of forgotten metals,
where the seed of the father
carries the pattern of stars,
where the last of the words is remember.
Paladine
He is the one we remember
the word for the children
the light of the blood
in its native season
the hard incandescence of rubies.
Alive in the heart
of the wheeling planets
he is sun and nebula
the tipped and generous cup
of the trining moons.
And 0 we remember
that somewhere in rumor, beyond
the cramped articulate country
where the visions of stars
open to breath and belief,
where faith is the evidence
and all constellations
converge on a still
and joyous center,
there in the reconciled bays,
in the last home of waters
the millennium of fire
where the earth perpetual
blossoms the trust of the air
in the sunlight of memory,
there where the vision
and heart reconcile
with the high mathematics
of judgment and logic,
he is there and beyond there
free of arrangement
of reason and passion
where the scent of rosemary
harbors his presence
and the light glints over the sun.
The Journey
Blood of the sun
and the lone hawk turning
spiraling under me
gold upon gold
blood of the sun
through nine generations
of fire and cloud
until the mined vein
of heaven opens
and gold upon gold
is the country beneath me
gold upon gold its story.
I turn above clouds
above the tipped cups
of the moons' penury
where only the sun
is behind me, only the light
refracted through gold upon gold
as I dive through the eons
and the sunlight fractures
in the blood of my wings.
From immutable distance
the story of men
is a cry in the sun
the faint wings' rustle,
the song of the sky
is bright, indecipherable,
imagined in prayer,
in the breath of the mortals,
the long, effacing sigh
of the elf,
encoded in time
and the first of the season
always returning
under my wing.
The blood of the sun
in a steady light
glitters above
lamentations of earth
and the vein of heaven
opens in song,
the first of the hymns,
the hymn you will always
and always remember,
the first of the breath of the light.
The Dream of Dragons
House of the whirlpool
month of the drowned rose
We in the absence
of light remember
the turn of winter
the chromatic dazzle of wings
here in the prison
of sleep and forgetfulness
amber of winter
refracted country
the lady remembered
in the altered veins of the throat
Month of the rains
month of the secret water
Under the light
the lapse of memory
rises to sound
to the lost blood calling
to the loud gate of knives
and the world's entry
parabola of the hawk
as the sun descends.
0 let the lady rise in fire
as the last sky burns to nothing.
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