The Unknown God

Sound of the singing bird or rustling poplar

shimmering like a tree of mirrors

where sickness or depravity hold sway.

When symbols and reflective images fade

conversion and repentance have no place

to stay their foothold. Unreal, unasked-for:

crass impertinence of incontinent nature!

Conclusion and advancement here must fail;

Eden's Garden shimmer like a dream.

Come to the glittering brink of our sunset world;

survey the sordid scene. Carved from light, this

twinkling crystal bowl can instantly shatter.

That still Heaven, a paradigm reversed of all

that lies outstretched upon this moving earth,

reflects, upon the highest of its peaks

(shooting sparks and fire into the air -

though all those riddled rays must blind mere men)

the brilliant counterpart of our dark echoings

which issue from the flesh which floats the deeps.

Answering each to each, the high and low;

sometimes in a darted sunbeam fused

poised hovering in that impartial zone

where neither undisputed gods nor men

hold primal sway -

the High communicates its purpose down,

the Depth will rise a little from its deep.

Mountains for their verdant valleys yearn;

valleys gaze where sunbeams smite the snow.

Neither nature knows its other half

except when selfish consciousness dissolves

and pristine inward sight reveals its eye.

I have a brother of the higher sphere

who loves me as I love.

Now and then I his sweet voice will hear

when I the inward barrier remove.

As he upon his height has known me not

so I within the deep have not heard him.

But when we these positions have forgot

then clear communicarion can begin.

The Veil shall folded be and packed away;

height shall bend to depth, depth reach to height.

I'll bathe myself in beams of his clear day

and he shall lave his limbs within my night.

The opposites transcended shall receive

from me and him and him and me in turn

the blessings of two minds that interweave

and benedictions from the flowing urn.

Where rises the image of this completed God...

whether in a spacious cavern where the sea breaks

or far inland where dwells the hermit in his cell...

all archaic and all living things

regenerate whatever of their primal being lapsed

(mystic communion of that unearthly ritual dance).

Of Greeks and Romans, of the Christian sphere,

of the modern European mind what then remains?

The hideous doubled nature shall transcend them all

with beauty not their beauty and uglier than them all -

beoyond them all, far beyond them all

let break the visage of this unknown God.