Classic Poem

My heart, loyal, atones in the darkness.
I shall bring it forth, like a tongue of fire
forth from a tiny purgatory into light;
and, hearing it thud against its prison, I drown
deep in the father's conscience-stricken love
who feels his blind son trembling in his arms.

My heart, loyal, atones in the darkness.
Joy, love, grief . . . all is laceration,
spurring its cruel logarithmic course,
its avid tides and its eternal swell.

My heart, loyal, atones in the darkness.
Mitre and valvule . . . I shall tear it out
to bear it in triumph to the knowledge of light,
the stole of violets on the shoulders of dawn,
the mulberry girdle of the eventides,
the stars and women's jovial entasis.

My heart, loyal, atones in the darkness.
Mine from a sheer pinnacle to cast it
a bleeding discus to the solar pyre.
So I shall extirpate my cancer of
exceeding weariness, suffer east and west
unmoved, and with perverted smile assist
at the ineptitudes of inept culture,
and flame will be within my heart inflamed
by the celestial sphere's symphonic fire.