Classic Poem

This is the poem of a month within a year
Within a world within an atmosphere
Grown black from that we see not.
We do not see.
The atmosphere is dense with devils.
The world is empty from the expulsion of these.
The year: such spectacles the blind wear.
The month: as eyes in night are holes,
So is the month an abstract organ.
And vision now a thing of thinking,
The thirsty eyes from damp brain drinking.

I shall tell a story.

Once (since here I lay the curse of fiction,
Which is the curse of thought's constriction
To once, and not again)
Within a month within a year within a world
Within an atmosphere incredible
Because sight loathes it, will not see it,
We are like shuddering angels locked
Within a desert heaven within an earth
Made populous by sin's expulsion.
Once: O believe it not
That this we live is so!
Already is the month's recoil a long-ago.

The story with the pained eye passes
Into time's museum of darkness,
Where what has been to staring horror
Protests its innocence: it is not,
Nor ever was it, sight and the heart
Make strange mistakes of seeing and believing.
And so the gasping month within the tangled year
Within the tearing world
Within the torn atmosphere
Stops breathing, seeing, dying:
Another month upon the shelf appears,
The days like book-enamoured fingers
Prepare to reach.
Sight and the heart their new mistakes beseech.

Here ends the story.

The poem takes the story away.
We have left nor a month nor its least cruel day.
Nor the envelope without the envelope
Without the envelope within.
This is the poem.
Are we so naked then of life,
Stripped to the death?
Is this the promised core of us?
Come closer, let us not shudder so, shiver.
We are not ill, nor dead — nor uncovered
In the lost shame of ordeal.
There is something so good in this
That, despite worry, hope, and no letter,
I scarcely dare let myself wish for better.