Genesis Poem by Michael O'Sullivan

Earth fire extinguished, heaven shot with flame,
A bronze girl in the water's hail
Commands, in sensuous excess
A planet's path, or comet's icy tail.
All nature's children self-consume:
Lear, element-in-flesh turns element again,
Heraclitus coaxes ash upon the sand,
While Charlemagne is crowned with his own rotting skull.
None more than lightning
Its white flesh devours:
For in that landless protein bowl
Before the Word, eternity astride,
Observe, illumination spent,
How darkness soon consumes the fecund tide.