Have I “The Spirit of Orthodoxy”?
I have not. But have I
The spirit of opposing? Perhaps-
I remember my mother complaining
“Criticize when you you have a house
Of your own, if you ever have one.”
And I “believe in Utopia”?
No. But it is a proper idea,
Utopia. It is proper to hope.
That things may be better, for instance,
And go on being better. It is proper
Not to piss our corrosion over
The beds of the flowers. If miracles will
Not occur, there should be
Mutations; not that I fancy
Either Christ with a pistol (he used,
I reflect, to turn us over,
Naked, to demons) or Big Shots
Whose nature and actions are mercy.
For my neck not the stiff collar
Of the Men of the State, or of God,
And not that soft collar God’s Men
Affect when they ape us
In a bonhomous mufti,
And not the kind worn open in sleet
By free-thinking offspring of Shelley,
Aggressive, and Left untenderly.
No medals, no citations, no codes
Of conclusions, by which all notions
Are infamous or accepted.
I do not decline that cress
May be pure and green on
Water running over red quartz,
That fine sand may be printed
Delicately by birds of the tide
Fringes, there a minute ago.
Light I ask for, not with excess
Of cold or heat, strong sufficiently
To reveal, to you and to me:
Element, congratulating,
Accentuating, of a perfection
Which we can think of only;
Or not think of, fatally—
Cold, tentative, in the fog
Wavering, and finding only
The semen of evil, the source
Of rejection, feeling of less,
Obsessive mildew of
Being always indifferent. In light
With light shall we enshrine the word
Enough till it sparkles, meaning
Enough now of plenty, but far from enough
Of extending and of dividing.
Inside red Ayers Rock
Rock crystal signed what inside
Our acts and our bodies
We are. It was light stronger
For darkness around, and made pure
From parching excess of heat
In the open. I say
Light is a centre correcting
Angles to nimbi, and in them,
In them we live.
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