True

©  Steve King 2014

All rights reserved

All this world turns by me while I wonder,

watching without, through half-shuttered slits that are these eyes;

seeing within, through a depth of far reflection,

dreams that live so safe inside—

high torrent of perception,

lacking ordinary rule or guide,

sweeping through all base obstructions:

you, me—yes me, especially,

feeling myself always as an object,

a so-complacent stranger,

often troubling to regard—

an almost-sense of almost-me,

that keeps a far and undefined remove.

I watch alone in this carnival place,

this world, its manifold aspect,

where every easy affectation

shields against the need for overt cries

on the eternal nature of constraint.

Heedless now of every origin

or the truth of any real beginning,

yet still left to wonder

how all wondering comes to be,

sensing only of an end,

so far from the advent of first things.

—as, somewhere on that bright and deadly plain,

holding the first kind of any truth,

rise of strange sensation to the eye,

gauging something other,

unfolding sudden, new,

from what had been a dreamy pageant

held in animal sight,

one that knew no inkling of a life gone by,

nor of anything foretold.

Old scent pulled up from ancient dust

mingling with the new song of winds,

eloquence unsensed ‘til then;

blue, color unnamed,

clear and godless sky;

red, the predator jaw,

auguring of pity,

a thing unknown before,

but all at once so real,

when dust would settle

‘round some heaving pair.

The dawn of truth.

And, pity first, before the thought of love.

No need for love at first upon the plain…

So truth comes always in the instant,

laying claim to everything before,

but devolves soon into a memory,

layered with new instants, new surprise,

all shaded with the weight of that first pity,

and what shall finally come to seem as love,

inconstant as it is or ever was,

kindled and extinguished,

soaring, sinking in waves of new dream,

bringing, in an afterthought,

the sudden inclination to believe

in old spirits and puzzling moods,

all axiom and anecdote,

intrusive shards as ancient as the deadly plain,

and yet the source of every new desire.

But life may not evolve only in watching,

nor may it last for long

balancing on pinnacles

of ever narrowed truth.

Life must be of moment and of measure,

and, at least, capacity to act.

My life would cast long shadows

of the serpentine will,

and these too shall be true;

each changing meaning in my life

alive in every shadow I may see.

My life would give hard form

to every occult thought

undiscovered in the face of light.

Truth and truth and truth again—

my life, young heir to fragments of the ancient dreams

which must all be as true

or none at all;

dreams born of the matrix of every false dawn,

new light to sing pure,

that for its time obscures

the coiled complex of still and harrowing shades

ever patient to reclaim

each soaring gladness in its turn.

Those dreams, my measure and model;

my palette, that strange combine

of pity, love and shadow;

cast in every memory

and on each waiting aspect I devise;

light that burns in the deepest redoubt,

reflecting worlds unknown to other eyes,

each so transient in the night;

and though they banish every anquish,

so they also calm each pure delight,

as if some stasis must be found,

and surety and silence and release

from all unquiet moments

adrift within my soul’s far keep.

As if there may be found

an easy truth of you and me

unknown yet to our worlds,

though tenuous, as all such truths must be.

A truth to leave its founding mark

upon those troubling strangers, you and me.

A new poem for Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads

http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com/