APOLLO Comments

From distant smoke and haze
Ethereal and vaporous blue,
Dizzying, the splendor
Of a flame arises.
There are bonfires burning
Shadowed distances:
They will say all turns to flame touched by our gaze.

A fire of mad ecstasy
Burns all of space.
Extinguished, it is stone,
Man, a grove of trees.
I see a brilliance grace
The Blue, looming like a lily on a lonely hill.
I see a beam of light take on the contours of a rock.

I see the burning up of everything;
And feel the great sun
Crackling as it sears,
Burning there within my blood;
And gleaming in a blossoming trunk,
In the voice of the nightingale,
Pouring over the earth in endless tears.

I focus on the light:
I rise in the radiant sweep
The image of this world
Gives other worlds;
And it is clear to me how deep
It is I drop
When my being floods the mighty flood of night.

Your lyre, grown mute,
Apollo, is the night.
And day's the pure and holy
Sound it breathes.
Hearing it, on the open plains,
The wheat grows ripe;
The lily laughs at daybreak, at evening the water speaks.

I have an astral sense
Able to discern
Your joyous song
Of mystic harmony.
My dream would be
To translate into verse
Your song of light that turns all worlds to ecstasy.
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