Solipsis

Take the eye of mind
    the longing i
    the knowing i
explore its subtle self
    as in a mirror
lit by the psyche's lambent flame

a cavern dark and subterranean
    where streaks of vapour
hide the recessed chambers
    to one who peeps
then looks askance

I have seen those caves
    have groped among the passages of self
explored the unreal dark
    and slept inside the tomb of yesterday
I learned to step ahead
    with ready foot
and ear attuned to echoes soft or strange

where sunlight creeps into the eastern hall
    there I awake to life
and mingle with the throng of feelings, presences
    and thoughts
that market-place    where I belong
    awake to self
my self-meant territory

mcmlx, rev. mmviii

i sit here pen in hand thinking

i sit here pen in hand thinking
commonplaces, while the snow falls
making it hard to come and go
i peck at my problems
like the birds on the roof, hungry for a crumb, a scrap
thown by a haughty god     'if i were him' i say
irreverently, 'well, i'd look after me first     dispense
emoluments with an imperious hand     like him     or is it me-in-him?'
certainly the snow is a commonplace     so is hunger     so is god     but
i mean     what i see what i know what i feel     not speculations
put simply, thinking goes so far, no further     commonplaces
drift upon the sea of thought, floating idly while the currents play
a suboceanic surge, momentous, patient, traverses the continent of the skull
projection of the infinite, more dynamic than a mountainstream in spring,
slower than the crawling of a glacier, upending thought,
moving debris and cracking ancient beds of instinct

i almost believe this:     but the birds skip on the roof unsatisfied
and the snow keeps falling, so i never shall get out

1970