A Lake That Burns Poem by Emmanuel George Cefai

A lake that burns
See
Its surface burns
Its bosom hot
With smoke that not
Putrid
But like incense
Smells
The lake that burns
The lake that burns in to the night


Over the heights of cloud
On cloud
The winds of Zephyr
Scale:
Ah! this scene and this
Place in the Sub-Conscious fit:
More than the beauties of the
Conscious
Though both be beauty.


The drunk wine
Potion
In the sacred cup of
Drear and glory simultaneous
Pours little by little
Drop after drop
Of the blood of the heavens
Evolved rain.


Soars the eagle with wings
Spanned and straight
Proportionate and uniform
As
From chaos and chance
And probability
It evolved by degrees and
By the hands of Master Time.


Sacred and smoking
incense to quiet the
Relative wrath
Of the old gods
There
In the high heavens
Seated
Seated
On uneasy thrones of gold.


Startled
From the warm of sleep
The miserable Poet Seer
The Poet Seer of misery
Walks
Paces
Pace after pace
In the bed room:
Midnight is past
And near three the clock
Chimes.


Shattered with
Gold and topaz
Twined
Diamonds of the East:
The uneasy Statue lay
On the cold floor:
So cold that mists
Emerged
Emerged in to the Sub-Conscious
Asleep at night
In the vessels of Life.


Tattered and torn
Fragments
Fragments that however join
The night is long
The night is uneasy:
The night is painful
Germ
Of the genesis of the
Next dawn.


Here
The Poet-Child-Seer woke
And
With opened eyes
And wild
Roamed
For he knew that in the
Reign of the Subconscious
Was
From the last remaining
Drops of Conscious.


Fingers that uneasy hang
And trembling
Thoughts
Each finger a cluster emitting
Like as to magnetic rays
The altitude of emotion.


For he woke:
The Poet-Child-Seer woke
And
With opened eyes
And wild
Roamed
For he knew that in the
Reign of the Subconscious
There
He roamed like a fish
In the delphinium of Time


There
There the years swim
Slow mute and silent
In the mists of the days
In the clutter of lives
In the mute flags
That sub-conscious
Fly
In to the depth of night
The Poet-Child-Seer saw
Storm-Child of the centuries
You must be saved
For you be Poet-Seer
And your nobility
Must
Let you rise
Rise
To the heights of the old days
The noble ancientness
Subsequent
The turnings of the globe
Of history
Sub-Conscious the brain mute
Looks
Looks in to the mirror of life:
The clutter
The mists that fly
The fragments of Sub-Conscious.


Castle of night
Castle
That glimmers in the lake waters
Castle
That smokes incense from
Its hidden dungeons
Where beauty hidden hides
From the night
Till
The casements of the castle
Open on the smiling gray
That is next dawn.


Beer
That smokes from the mugs
Of the channels of beauty:
Snows
That fall in the long nights
Flowers
That red and trellised
DNA-twirled
In the cold heights of the heavens
The night


In the ways of the
Town of the Brain
Beauties move slow
Mute and silent
In the canals of Time
That smile
Sphinx of the Universe
The hammer
Of the old ancient
Nobility of dogma.


Into the night
The red dusk fades
And unto his eastern cave
Flees:
The old Norseman with the helmet
Of iron and covering
Icicles of snow
Dripping
Passed by silent
His descendants he saw
In the town and the city
Entering
A bedroom a couple
Made love
Another bedroom
He saw an old man sleeping:
And there
There
Stood the old Norseman
With tears in his eyes
And white-red beard.


‘You Poet Seer, ’ he said to me
‘have predilection for the
Winter, nights, stars, moon, and
Their brood:
Why? O why? ’


Replied the Voice:
‘Contemplate Beauty.
In the mute paces of Master Time
The Sub-Conscious finds its
Flowering:
And therein too therein
Lies its Spring:
In the mute paces of Master Time
You will walk too
And too
Be in the luck of Beauty withholding.’


In to the palaces of Beauty
For Beauty has many palaces
The Poet-Child-Seer of the wild
Wild eyes
Will barefoot pace
Walk
Wandering
Wandering amidst the maze
Of corridors secret
Secret passages
And halls of beauties
And of glories old:
Where shone the lights of gold
On many a festive night
Whilst
In the garden outside
The rains fell,
The rains fell
And snow.


O! this be the work of the Sub-Conscious
That magic wand
That touched, just touched
Will wanders write on earth
And in the skies
The heavens immense
Words noble and great and of us all
That taken to the heart and
In the heart
Will on the tapestries, the noble
Tapestries
The wonders of old beauty
Ancient
Manifest.


Smiled then
The Poet-Child-Seer spurning
Wealth and power
For wealth and power
Is the power of the word,
The Voice of the Individual Sovereign Will
The beauty, the night, the stars, the moon,
And then
The opening of day the Dawn.
Lullaby of the Poet-Child-Seer
Wandering through
The forests of beauty
The thicket of trees
The mists colored and deep
And thick with the scents
Of beauty and the dreams
The scepter of Morpheus
The song mute and lonely
Of solitude in dreams
Lullaby
Lullaby of the Poet-Child-Seer
Wandering through
The forests of beauty
The thicket of trees
The mists colored and deep
And thick with the scents
Of beauty and the dreams


Dawn that comes, dawn of beauty
Beauty that rises from the pebbles
Beauty that rises with the mists
The scents of spume and sea-waves
The genesis from the sea, the waters
That girdle
The tongues of earth:
Dawn that sings in the songs of birds
The rising trees of green that stir
Dawn that comes, dawn of beauty
Beauty that rises from the pebbles
Beauty that rises with the mists
The scents of spume and sea-waves


Night of the stars
Night of the moon
Night of dancing lights
Night of the faded twilights
Night of defeated dusks of red.


Dawn that comes, dawn of beauty
Beauty that rises from the pebbles
Beauty that rises with the mists
The scents of spume and sea-waves
The genesis from the sea, the waters
That girdle
The tongues of earth:
Dawn that sings in the songs of birds
The rising trees of green that stir
Dawn that comes, dawn of beauty
Beauty that rises from the pebbles
Beauty that rises with the mists
The scents of spume and sea-waves