Classic Poem

1.

The window to the mortal world
shows mountain islands in the sea.
One of them rises at the same
slope the soul floats from the body

flat on the bed, in stony folds,
the profiled head propped on a pillow.
A second distant hill has curled
into a corner of the window

(more a mirror than a window)
precisely in the size and shape
of the other pillow at the foot
of the bed from which, now flying up

from feet of clay, utterly free,
the female soul looks down on man,
her weeping hair a kind of pity,
her breasts as round as sun and moon.

2.

For a pittance he would illustrate
the poems of others, like The Grave
by Robert Blair (forgotten now,
of the graveyard school). He would engrave

a scene like this and make it his,
for right was left, and black was white,
the world was flat and he went round
his cottage blessed with second sight,

like Catherine, his better half,
and when the visions would forsake
both of them, " What do we do then, Kate? "
" We kneel down and pray, Mr. Blake. "

3.

Soul peeled like a printer"s proof
off the body"s copper plate.
Hands black as a chimneysweep"s
worked and with black hands he ate.

Raging at injustices
to all of humankind, yet placid,
steady with needle, burin, paint,
he brushed the pastel tones with acid.

The worldly took their patronage
elsewhere when he made them wait
for pages queerly old and new,
ahead of their time, and always late.

Time was of such little note!
Heaven came by the infernal
method, corrosives, which in Hell
are salutary and medicinal;

birds sang of their innocence
and angels lodged beneath his roof.
Off the body"s copper plate
soul peeled like a printer"s proof.

4.

Illuminations like stained glass
on paper, or like parasols
that shaded with a pale translucence;
enlightenment from Paracelsus

himself, beloved sage, who said
imagination is like the sun:
its light, intangible, may set
a house afire. O let light in

from deities of every source —
the New and the Old Testament,
gods of the Greeks, the Romans, Norse,
gods of wise heathens, gods that went

so many eons back he had
to invent them, so to mourn their loss.
Colors like a bonfire blazed
prophecies. In The Song of Los

he burned the institutions, Churches:
Hospitals: Castles: Palaces:
(built, he wrote, like nets & gins
& traps to catch the joys

of Eternity ) on a treated plate
and flipped it, fusing true and false.
" All his life, " the future wrote,
" he spoke of " lost originals." "

5.

London turned meanwhile, cog-wheeled
factory of speed; grinding
people up in mills, it spilled
William Blake on common ground.

Rest in peace, white chalk and red,
hammer and chisel, rest in peace,
aqua fortis, vinegar,
salad oil and candle grease.

No gravestone for the great engraver.
Never mind. We"ll meet hereafter.
Catherine, who"d lost her beauty
to toil and hunger years before,

posed a last time ( you have ever
been an angel to me ), and
sold his works to stay alive.
Let the future understand

he sat with her for hours together
daily following his death,
and she followed his instructions
from Jerusalem or Lambeth,

Bunhill Fields, Soho or Felpham,
Fountain Court, all was the same —
and soul, its twisted sheets in tatters,
rose up from its bed of letters.