The Illuminated Blake

          (uses phrases from the book of the same title)

The father’s hair shows wild centrifugal terror.
He stares not at us, but at the shear of the open hand.

And I thought you monstrous, April evenings
when my soul grew blacker than a raisin.

Notice the frail, interlinear foliage, how
the waxen blades of her thighs meet like graven

images—the indignity of my body, how it
shuddered from the assault of every dying thing.

But after his embrace of pity, see how she rises
from the word pity—face turned inward

from the perversity of separation. I wanted
to live without seeing myself in it, naked

pollen-colored sun, split from the vast masculine
body, contorting under the weight

of brilliance, our creation—the mistake
of the word I gave you so easily.

See how she slips from the mastery of Urizen
beyond the cutting fields, flaming—