Clouds without Water/The Adept
The Adept
I
Even as the holy Ra that travelleth Within his bark upon the firmament, Looking with fire-keen eyes on life and death In simple state and cardinal content;Even as the holy hawk that towers sublime Into the great abyss, with icy gaze Fronting the calm immensities of time And making space to shudder; so I praiseWith infinite contempt the joyous world That I have figured in this brain of mine. The sails of this life's argosy are furled; The anchor drops in those abodes divine.Master of self and God, freewill and Fate. I am alone—at last—to meditate.
II
Wrapped in the wool of wizardry I sit; Mantled in mystery; the little things That I have made through weariness of wit, Stars, cells, and whorls, all wonder in their wings!These Gods and men, these laws, these hieryglyphs And sigils of my fancy seem to spire In worship up mine everlasting cliffs I built between my will and my desire.They reach me not; I made a monstrous crowd, Innumerable monuments of thought, But none is equal; this high head is bowed In vain to the wise God it would have wrought,Had not—Who sitteth on the Holy Throne Thereby must make himself to be alone.
III
See! to be God is to be lost to God. That which I cling to is my proper essence; Nor is there aught at any period That may endure the horror of my presence.I conjure up dim gods; how frail and thin! How fast they slip from this appalling level! This is the wage of the fellatrix Sin Drunk on the icy death-sperm of the Devil.I were a maniac did I contemplate The outward glory and the inward terror, Sick with the hideous light myself create From the dark certainty of gloom and error.For I am that I am—behold! this 'I' Hath nothing constant it may measure by.
IV
Should I take pleasure in the fond perfume That curls about my altars? in the throats That chant my glory in the decent gloom Of lofty ministers? Shall the blood of goatsAnd bulls and men send up a fragrant steam To me, who am? Shall shriek of pythoness Or wail of augur move this dreadful dream To some less melancholy consciousness?I have created men, who made them gods Of their own excrements, and worshipped them. I cannot match these calculating clods Who twist themselves a faecal diademFrom all the thorny thought that plague them most; Break wind, and call upon the Holy Ghost.
V
Yet I abide; for who is Pan is all. He hath no refuge in deceitful death. What soul is immanent may never fall; What soul is Breath can never fail of breath.The pity and the terror and the yearning Of this my silence and my solitude Are broken by the blazing and the burning Of this dread majesty, this million-huedBrilliance that coruscates its jetted fire Into the infinite aether; this austere And noble countenance set fast in dire And royal wrath, this awful face of fearBefore whose glance the ashen world grows grey, Crashes, and chaos crumbles all away.
VI
As when the living eyes of man behold The embalmed seductions of a queen of Khem Wrapped with much spice and linen and red gold And guardian gods on every side of them;Yet inasmuch as life is life, they shrink, Shrivel and waste to ashes as men gaze: So doth the world grow giddy at the brink Of these unfathomable eyes, that blazeSwifter and deadlier than storms or snakes. Then—o what wonder, as I strain afar The basilisk flame!—what breathless wonder wakes That I behold unsinged a silver star!O joy! O terror! O!—O can it be There is a thing that is, apart from me?
VII
I travelled; so the star. We neared; we saw Each other, knew each other; in your face Mine equal self with majesty and awe Abode; and thus we stayed for a great space.What was the manner of our countenance? I saw you seated, as a great lost God With blasphemy exulting in your glancce And horror at your lips; my soul was shodWith glory, and your body bathed in glory, So that from out the uttermost abyss The very darkeness churned itself to hoary And phosphor foam of agony and bliss.The authentic seal of our majestic might Stamped on the light in light the light of light.
VIII
So presently, most solemnly and slowly, Our fingers touched and caught; our lips reached forth And with a conscious purpose smote their holy Lives into one, and loosed their common wrath.Unto the ends of our dead universe Their frenzy rolled; henceforth no prince or power Should lift the sterile strength of that one curse Even to bring one thought to birth one hour.For now we knew; "it is a lonely thing To sit supreme upon the single throne;" But being come thus far, goes glittering: "It is a lovely thing to be alone!"Silence! Beware to speak the fatal word That might inweave our two-ply with a third!
IX
Wherefore again in sexless sanctity The mighty lingam rears its stilled sublime; The mighty yoni spreads its chastity Against the assaulting gods of space and time.Rather be Poedra than Semiramis! I will deny you, though you doom to dare To abdicate, and risk the spirit kiss In the embraces of the wanton air.Why should we cast our crowns to gods unborn? Why yield our bleeding garlands till the hour When to ourselves we seem a shame and scorn And seek some craft to span a statelier power?Not for a while evoke that sombre spell! The present still exceeds the possible.
X
That is his truth that seems to sink supine Into your bosom's bliss, the scented snare, Killed by your kisses shuddering in his spine And blinded in the bowers of your hair!This is his truth, who seems to writhe and sob Beneath the earthquake pangs of you caress, Whose heart burns out in one volcanic throb, Whose life is eaten up of nothingness.This is his truth, and yours, that seem to be Mere beauteous bodies gripped in epicene And sterile passion, all unchastity In being chaste, all chaste in our obsceneAnd sexless mouthings, that repugnant roll Their bestial billows on the snow-pure soul.
XI
This is our truth, that only Nothing is, And Nothing is an universe of Bliss; That loves denote supernal ecstasies, And saintship lurks in the colossal kiss.Loves are the letters of the holy word That contradicts the curse "Let Being be!" Since all things, even one thing, are absurd; And no thing is the utmost ecstasy.Kisses induct the soft and solemn tune That Israfel shall blow on Doomisday— Your silky eyes are blue as that pale moon (For ere it dies it sickens into grey)That witches see, whose eager violence Aborts the gods of cosmic permanence.
XII
The uninstructed and blaspheming man Looks on the world and sees it void and base. Let him endure its horror as he can! There is no help for his unhappy case.The love-taught magus, the hermaphrodite, Knows how to woo the Mother, and awake her; Beholding, in the very self-same sight, The self-illumined image of the Maker.I love, and you are wise; our spirits dance A merry measure to the music moving In waves through that mirific brilliance. Will you first tire of wit, or I of loving?Tire? O thou sea of love, thy ripples run Into themselves, to my serener sun!
XIII
For you I built this faery dome of words And crowned it with the cross of my desire. I circled it with songs of blessed birds And cradled all in the celestial fire.The stars enfold it; the eternal sun And moon give light; nor clouds nor rain intrude; Only the dews of Dionysus run In this intoxicating solitude.I have begemmed its marble flame of spires With jewels from the bliss of God, and set Chryselephantine columns curled like fires Below each misty opal minaret.Is there no window to the east? Behold The eyes of Love, your love, the essential gold!
XIV
For me therein shall you erect a statue Even as you know me with the mystic eyes Hungrily, hungrily a-gazing at you, Afeast upon our strange sad ecstasies.Make me the aching mouth parched-up with blisses The lips curled back, the breath desiring you, The whole face fragrant with your full free kisses, The soul thereof exhaling scented dewBorn in the utmost world where we in truth Abide like Bacchus with a Bassarid Drunk with our art, love, beauty, force and youth; But place that head upon a pyramidOf snaky lightnings, lest—but that shall be Always a secret between you and me.
XV
Or, an you will, evoke me as the Sphinx With lion's claws, bull's breast, and eagle's wings! You are my riddle, and the answer sinks Below the deep essential base of things,Rises above the utmost brim of thought And bubbles over as impatient song. Yet "We are one" is all, and all is naught; And this one "one", and "all", and "naught"The whole content of our imagining, [shall throng The great arcanum in the adytum hid From men, and though we varve or kiss or sing, The Sphinx is dumb, and blind the Pyramid.—Now our affairs are ordered perfectly. Give me your mouth, your mouth, and let us die!