I. Prologue

The Poet is one who doth behold

the Goddess comes to us in many forms.

The song I would sing to you

in this season, is one of love

without reason, without name

ever changing, ever the same

never moving, never still

always has never been, without ending.

I do not compare thee with vain artifice

In words which are lies playing meaningless tricks.

No way to declare Thee, O unspoken rhyme,

who makes us all one without metrical line…

In song of simplest praise to Her

I will raise up my voice and drink of my cup.

O heedless music, of nature divine,

drunken with your pleasures of field and of vine

I seek to unravel your mysteries—

of Love’s secret treasure, unbound, unmeasured.

Merciless bondage of pen and of time,

the tools of her madness wherever she flies.

Clockwork encryptions are at my command,

continuous phrases like waves on the sand…

As my love for you languished upon the shore

to add to the volume of liturgy

in love’s sacred song between you and me.

Like lightning strikes in a thunderstorm

She illuminates the darkest night

with momentary flashes of brilliance.

So I see the fleeting spectre

of Her fearful presence I your eyes.

Who knows how long the ancient lovers mourned?

How sad the tale of their lament,

how tragic, bittersweet their rhyme.

Falseness, lies…Who lost? And won?

At what price can the sun be killed,

or stopped? What power might turn

buried rocks in the shade of time?

Who can avoid the inevitable passage

through Her realms of fiery terror?

To make this page burn as you read…

Her visage, our bondage, is wild and free.

I am an unsung Poet, without money, without friend;

where your metric line did end is where my muse begins.

Once I was a courtier who sang for Kings and Queens;

tales in verse did spin my web with artifice to deceive.

Thus to escape confusion by imagination’s use;

yet in the final phrase, to dust had all return’d.

As shining Venus into morning fell

the dawn of love dissolved, crumbling

into death at his feet, cold as stone

like a Greek statue in disembodied ruin.

II. The Poet’s Recitation

“The Poet is one who doth behold

Love comes to us in many forms:

We may cite lovers we have all known

of Juliet and her Romeo,

uncounted tales of tragic woe

and of love’s pleasures we unfold

of virtue and wisdom if all be told,

of the pain of love gone cold,

of misery and solitude…

of love’s return and life renewed.

Picture in your mind a land of magic

and sorcery; a city of celestial brilliance

wherein dwell the keepers of Death’s house.

Legend and rumor find these beings often

along the beach, a quiet encounter

while gazing out across the tides…

or standing at the crossroads of destiny;

our fate the experience of Her predilection

the Mistress of our own reflection.

Her messengers are not of men, possessed

of a higher throne beyond Death’s dominions.

Children of an inspiration, a feeling,

a sense of imminently approaching danger…

It was in a common vacant lot with weeds

adjacent to a gasoline station, closed.

There he leaned on a signpost by the road

never moving. She said “where thou goest

so go I, yet do not look for me.”

Like the wind, Her face he could not see.

An ominous apparition of things past and to come,

he was dusty as the gravell’d roadside

and stood very tall with long flowing hair.

Not speaking, his gaze of silent intensity

a gesture of control defying comprehension.

Fearful terror did split my soul as if dying.

As he extended his hand, I regarded his palm;

a window through which to witness other worlds—

such enchanted music, and visions divine

whose mysteries suffer not to be describ’d.

She may comfort him with a gentle word

which might serve to break attitudes of ice

and of stone, taking care never to reveal

the desperate emptiness of our hopeless fate.

Pointing always to the light in the distance,

he said “at the end of time is love eternal,”

all this an aside to the nature of our sorrow

for after the tragedy is played, grief remains.

Poor Heloise, child, who has not loved you?

Unless it were your own miserable father, alas.”

III. The Old Priest’s Lamentation

“They said he was a Poet, this Abelard,

and he won her love with his art.

Alone together on the quiet hillside

when he came there to see my Heloise.

Although I never beheld their eyes,

some say they looked strangely overtaken

or deeply obsess’d. He dealt in ancient wisdom

and wrote archaic mystically symbolic verse.

He won her heart with his words and imagery

descriptive of how she was lov’d by him.

One night very soon after the catastrophe

I dreamt he was risen from his tomb,

and was waiting outside the church for her

to appear, on Sunday after the morning service.

He was standing with back to the sun

narrating how, even being dead, he could

still feel its warmth through him,

while several other vacant spirit-faces

were huddled together in the wake of his shadow,

like insects under the rocks of oblivion.

She loved him as a woman must love,

yet to my eye she did seem possess’d

of the ignorance of the very Devil himself.

In spite of the old, the young must progress

defiant or oblivious to establish’d conventions,

disobedience a gyration of their turmoil, still

an artist can be anything, a consciousness changeling.

Who would crucify himself to be Love’s martyr?

I am a sinful man, and do not understand,

that there are many things I may not know.

With skillful command of articulate phrase,

an inherent genius for eloquent expression,

he poised his pen as a weapon, a device

by which he could attain the maiden’s love.

She would often read his poems to herself,

as lovers sometimes do, and would feel

somehow drawn into the fabric of the scenario

woven not by the poet but the voice of Love.

His eyes were subdued, yet something wild

flashed there, a look too deep, inquiring.

Now that I am long past being old,

another truth is revealed in stark clarity:

true Love has nothing to do with us,

our mortal passions, thoughts or desiring,

heeding not our own inquiring but rather

at secret times of Her own devising

appears to us suddenly, unexpectedly…

the body of youth the vessel of Her wrath

as the ships are tossed by waves upon the sea,

Love, the Goddess, rules the tides of all humanity.

I told them what I could of this life

and what I believ’d to be the truth—

the fear of God Almighty and abstinence

from all creation and its attendant strife.

Man’s inflam’d blazing passions thus denied,

myself vainly sought to purify

and therefore took no earthly wife.

such fraudulence causes my discourse to falter

For now as I lie beneath the altar

I wish I had been father to my daughter.”

IV. Canticles and Epistles

“What love is this of which you speak, Caiaphas?”

saith the Poet. “I know not love, for

mine is the consuming fire of unquenchable thirst,”

saith the lost spirit. “Truth in Hell,” I thought.

“Now, you who have ventur’d beyond the surface

of abominations, explanations and motivations,

and have seen love conspicuously absent—gone, fled

from the soliloquy of an old man condemn’d,

except in regret of due punishment’s just reward,

the tragedy of wrong done Heloise and her Abelard.

Love, the mistress of our distress, guardian of the dead,

Whose song pervades all in universal harmony,

cosmic organum, music of the heavenly spheres

in which all the powers of existence are manifested,

mysterious beings, forces or presences, who will

affect our world in many subtle ways; a feeling,

a ray of sunlight in a dark place suddenly…

Withered branches of October trees, memories fading

at last into obscurity—shadows in pursuit of twilight.

Voices from beyond the tomb, vacant rooms of empty space.

Soon all sorrow shall pass, my beloved.

Do not seek to remember me in shadows,

nor hidden in forgotten places—our love

is here with me as always, unspoken.

Whispered curses, vulgarities and coarse talk

of what evil tricks were played in the night…

All will pass away, “no use to linger over a dream,”

they say. Now, silent as a stillborn day, let

our children pass into immaculate oblivion.

Some seeds sown here, some cast there,

some take root in fertile soil and grow strong.

Others fall upon rocks, there to die unborn.

Yet the saddest thing which love beholds

is a seedling that withers and dies, our lives

are as straw, subject to the whim of the wind.

Who knows how long the ancient lovers mourn’d?

What can relieve the burden of their yoke, how poignant

the tale of their lament, how bitter the poet’s line,

O’erturning rocks in the shade of time.

Long ago and far away you heard me

call your name, through field, forest,

mountain and desert. Now that I have

follow’d you on Earth and in the sky,

through raging winds and stormy seasons,

the song I will sing to you ever is the same,

without needing reason, without name.

Like the river to the sea,

my love returns to you.

I am unto my lady true.

What now, I ask thee, Holy Muse,

my comforter in pain. My soul’s

only light in darkness—are you

as thoughtful, as inspir’d, as near

to the divine? Or failing as you cannot

hope to show what we perceive,

but cannot ever know—emotion we feel

but can’t describe—that true reality

beyond or conscious minds—O!

Stay with me, do not be unkind.

Come flower of instinct, to the soul’s secret inquiring

O come, song of essence, spring of sweet desiring

to help a sadden’d lover to an happier state

where spirits are free and minds equate…

I don’t know where to look, or even what for—

does love understand all this? Open a door?

Or are lovers liars, deceiving and vile,

pretending their lives away each with a smile.

Poison upon their lips as they speak—

I want to be ripe when my harvest is reap’d.

The distance between us is an exile unresolv’d,

a stony prison unbreech’d, unbroken, uncompromise’d

of lost love and cruel separation—who will gain

and who will lose, as sorrow dominates the mode?

I may have heard God once, or only the wind—

“Where one thing ends, there another begins.”

I was taught in my youth to follow the plan,

event would work out so I’d know where to stand,

yet what is the future? May it change by my hand?

Now, the deep, sighing breath of regret

and remorseful depression which knows

no comforter, no sacred muse to lighten

darkly color’d hours, eyes which see

only to languish in agoniz’d desolation,

for fate tolerates no solution, remedy, nor cure

to ease the oppressive weight of solace.

Alone against sunlit hours waning,

the moon waxes toward a door between worlds.

Across the deepest night of reflection,

the painful remembering, the sorrow to forget…

Embalmed in melancholia’s baleful tomb.

And how like a tomb are cold, damp stone walls

in the convent and monastery; seclusion protects

the hermitage wherein now stands another—

A worn visage of grey, aged and cloister’d

is Abelard, having so long lain dead, stretch’d

as a feast before the mouths of the hungry Earth.

Hear then, O ye people, and judge accordingly

this song which even after death was sung

of how Heloise was so well lov’d and how

their love yet burns hot in desperation’s furnace.

“While lost in reverie of times long past

descending through sweet melancholia, at last

arriv’d at a convincing state of woe,

my misery complete, I cry thee to behold

what madness thou compell’st me to—

the emptiness which forms our love,

the wastefulness of too much time

spent in solitary remembrance of days gone by…

A summer’s dream—shall I weep here anew?

Must I bear a memorial cross to you?”

Who will bring the flowers to mourn

and cast a sorry, passing glance

on their way to wherever they go?

“Not I,” said She, and went on Her way.

Goodbye was said, but She did not hear it:

grief was felt, but She did not feel it—

fierce passion struck, but She did not perceive it

and love, love was in the very air

and She spoke it with Her every breath,

upon Her lips the kiss of death.

“The open’d window rains light and shadow

into the quiet, never silent hermitage.

Burnt offerings and devotional prayers

of generations once charg’d the atmosphere

but now a caste of disconsolation here

colors my thoughts darkly, and sullies time.

Love has flown from me ne’er to return.

So deep is the pit inspiring a wealth of hues;

visionary books had been my pleasure to read—

the tools of prophets and poets. Philosophy

and fine music instructed my flight, and

tutor’d my mind, growing fat with life

even within the womb of the tomb.

But now across the wasteland, void of time

my broken heart speaks in silent, hidden rhyme.

Obscure, the evasive ways in which

a lover may work such evil tricks,

but at the last, in tenderness,

seeks only to kiss her sad, tormented lips

and search the sky for sympathetic woe

fearing payment for my self-will’d moan

with arms outstretch’d to thee, dear friend,

for sorrow dies when hope hath fled.

A momentary thought, the flash of a diamond

far away on sunlit beaches is the way

love’s last fleeting glance left me cold

and swirling in a torrential stream of motion,

for the storming of humanity moves

like a circus turning over and over in the air,

a constant roaring and rumbling of time

as it floods past, a wild river raging.

O dark disconsolation of familiar melancholia,

my bride of ages who alone among lovers

hath ne’er departed, always remaining…

Bittersweet are her tears, still upon my face.”

When at length concluded Abelard his speech,

Great Choros-Anubis did undertake to speak

Wherefore came these underworld visions forth

From Death’s house; all her secret chambers;

“Of lover’s art whoe’er would take degree

must learn Her rudiments in poetry.

As sailors with seamanship their vessels move,

Art guides the sun, Art instructions to love..

Of boats and stars, others know the rule;

The Poet is master in Love’s mighty school.

Therefore make bold to tell what you have seen

and heard of love in antiquity—remember

that in the laboriously winding subterranean

vaults of the wild untam’d unconscious mind

only that which is worthy of song shall remain,

for to love is the will of eternal God

into whose presence we enter with sacred psalms.

In loving, we are part of that celestial chorus

and may rightly answer that joyous noise,

and learn to suffer accordingly; Love is the soul of artistry.”

Thus the Poet is one who doth behold

Love comes to us in many forms:

across the wildervoid of time

voiceless hearts speak in mystical rhyme,

O, that song of essence, spring of desiring,

come, flower of instinct, to the souls sweet inquiring.

Of lost and tangl’d metric verse construct

to my love the expression of all we have known.

Through the veil of frozen time, let emerge

a remembrance of Love, undefil’d and pure.