Poliphilo's Dream Poem by Leon Moon

The lactating stars inside my heart instigated the will to write,
I sank below a bed of grass, and away, I was out of sight


Voice. Where does my heart reside?


The Sun has inherited the scales of Ouroboros.
All light bares the weight of a Moon's spurn loss!
She beams luminescence upon the shadow's dross
And bestows light to all life from bird and moss;
A silver Dawn, too familiar to be true, hones Plato's dew
Into twinkling reflections of abnegation, and celestial,
From star to stone, from ear to nose, from trunk to pew;
And I roams with intent, as the hollowed-chest beastial.

The forest hums to the melody of Eleazer's strophe.
Hunched boughs drip with the tears of Aurea's plea
And the harp-winged butterflies flutter Apollo's fee;
The undergrowth wears the wood of caduceus' trophy,
Spines of filament arch like bows, wrinkles scathe the land,
My rage of love has burnt to ash, my sorrow to black coins,
Small black mirrors, small black eyes — I hold them tightly in my hand.
The impatient dead within my waist no longer dances upon my loins.

Voice. Where does my heart reside?

Ah! The Sun's rays spitefully burn and reflect,
Each beam is a thought, a conflagration of intellect
Upon sweat and tears, to no affect
On Love's dreariness. I slouch next to a slough and genuflect
Neither to pray or to prey upon a Lord
But to release some sort of heat:
My knees consecrated, I fade before Sato's sword,
Bowing to Somnus, shedding skin from my feet.


I

Voice. Where does my heart reside?

The Moon glows phosphorous, a fiery tortoise shell,
My mind's eye crinkles to a pulping stone,
And I am ever closer to that artist's hell
That has plagued all men, that has made porcelain from bone
For fools to wear: enwrought in intellects of gold, silver and emerald.
Those statues of scholarly temper have no stand here,
Not in their bodily wisdom nor in their herald,
They are thaws in burning chalices, enslaving minds through fear.

Voice. Where does my heart reside?

My head has hardened unto clay,
And every thought has darkened unto grey,
Each finger to shape for contemplation;
I have found no love through rumination.
My pilgrimage of silenced roses red and white
Has led me to an ethereal glade scarred by a stream
Where by three masked nymphs lie in light,
Idly lined in the divine rib-bone carvings of a dream.

Voice. Where does my heart reside?

The 3 women giggled and arose at once, lining to a filed gallery
Of painted busts — emerald, gold, silver, soft ash and mercury;
Then came one, by one came, in masks of ancient gold,
That of Greek foundations told.
They sat me down, alone, by a stained fountain-font
In the centre, a statue of Venus was burning ever less,
Her thighs throb in golden blood, my heart remains gaunt
As each bubble pops and trickles into evanesce.

I I

A nymph comes forth, resembling Plotinus
‘I am Plotinus, Seraphim of wisdom,
The heart you seek beats in a Kingdom
Where all burns in perichoretic rhythm
And all man is in a solitude of freedom;
Though your feet and loins have receded
And your head and heart deteriorated,
The fair love of your will is yet conceded:
Be judicious and relinquish all faith seeded,
Surrender to the art for which your vision bled'
He placed a warm finger above my brow,
And I fell deeper to the idle vow
I pledged besides the slough.


I I I


The lactating stars inside my heart instigated the will to write,
I sank below a bed of grass, and away, I was out of sight


Voice. Where does my heart reside?

And under the winds breath I am credulous
My vessel has landed ashore, my sedulous
Excursion for my love's heart has given birth; —
I have awoken besides her breasted hearth.
The beneficiaries have been collected, the black eyes
Of sorrow are blessed through indifference unto my opal flesh

And I, without sight, with-see the fated gyres;
The ink-mouthed children are released from the crèche,
All passion and celestial reframe becomes one;
Though it burns, wasn't this a heavenly thought?
I flock to the Godhead Sun.
Am I beguiled by what new wisdom has brought?
Ah! This is what fashioned my youth's purple heart!
But -I arch for a kiss against my mother-lover
And feel the kindred warmth of my soul-reason's start;
Her carmine lips disperse as they part, sizzling into another;
From air, to a raging fire, my sweet Polita!
Her hands struck one, melting onto the ground
And out rose the fiery woman, Hestia!
Her touch burns, my old age's wild youth has been found!
Her heart blossoms from a red-white rose to a golden flower
And my sorrow, rage, skin and soul withers to a shower
Of dust; — I rise with a golden bow, as fire, as air, as a woman's sight
Into the oneness of our Muse's light; —


And when I awoke, I had no will to write.