Epilogue from Kosmoautikon: Girl 23 (Book 5) by Mark Chandos.

(Single man, as chorus, comes forward from darkness.)

i
Once past the post, I will not haunt your ears.
My hands rest at my side, torn from the plow
I held too long. I turn to see the jagged rows
I made. The voice speaks, “Your seeds are in
the ground before the rains come.” “Return home.”
Not looking back, slowly, I hear the blade and horse
begin to cut the soil without my hand.

Men tell what they see in life. If they have wintered,
then winter is in their eyes. But none can winter till they
feel the cold. We taste the floating flakes of ice on lips
but never enough to drink. We hear the flutter of wings
but never catch the throat we desire.

We know there is a fire in Mind. We know we steal fire
from other’s eyes. We know we cup savors of fire from
hand to hand, not counting the costs. We know we
dowse bones stoked with chill up to eyes. We know
the Watcher, patient, expectant, steps to us at death
to collect these eyes.

In witching hours and wings across the land
a lifting mist escapes moist mouths agape.
The only way to live through winter is to winter.
There are no other facts. The only answer to life
is more life. Death crushes every second answer.

It takes so many years to make a world,
so many summers and matters ending,
so long at wanting early what has no fancy,
no goodly parts or sound and loved too much.

ii
So do not come to me with a thousand men between
your breasts. Who lives from another’s remains, eats
in a poor country. My voice is a liberal empire with
camps in every nation. Dragons in my blood, I train
alien dolphins on boiling seas; I steal upon the land by night.
I perch high in trees and survey with placid brows
the burning towers of the plain.

So do not come to me with a thousand men held
by your arms. When I hold you, I do not want
to taste phosphors of faithless lips on my teeth.
By my thesis you see I am not at ease. I cannot
live unaided, either by man or by God. I learn man
trading man’s enchantments. I learn God by God’s
meters, my hand erasing as I write. I draw arched gates
on the broad face of stones and return to my home.

Close your eyes, take the world into your hands.
There, hold it like a burning ember. Hold it.
Grasp supremacy in your arms, take a ship
to Tarshish. Run proud, run distant, run as far
as you can from the geometers of God. Except

that would only be another story of God.

If your supreme concept is not a Being of love,
show me sticks to rub and smithy ceaseless love?
Show me collided rock that sparks ceaseless life?
No? Then I will show you a mystery: Two plasmas
at distance move germane to First Light. When one light
moves, the other moves; when one light sees, the other
sees, when one inclines, so both incline.

Or is life hobbled minus proxies of supremacy
at its core? How far can I swim beneath the surface
of my mind – before I admit, all I can say,
all I can do, is write and tell a story of God?
I can only say God talks like this, loves like
this, shuns hate like this. How? Only men
say their life is like this or that, since you
hear the timber in my voice, the agitation
on my waters, haunted nights, leaping wet
on dolphin skins, moth-hair eyes,
and ebony tides.

iii
Now be brave. I discharge all I know, my sleep
hid in night that holds all tides. Spiders on my
eyes rest transfixed. I press fossil prints future
kings trace with scuttling fingers, like blind men
reading brail. O, if called to my page, clasp
gathering breaths to my voice and give me scope;
breathe dead poetry back to life.

Diminish from time my assiduous station.
Release from consent my sentient sound.
Secede from restraint new mind and speech.
Go, two by two. Take no longer years to build
my moral. Usher your ears for prophecy.
You are now priests of my sound.

Once past the posts I will not haunt my ears. My
poem as snarled and frozen imprint of my mind,
my feet fixed for all time in stone, all my futures
now are present, my foresight narrowed to a point:
No more rough transects from anguished despair to
euphoric peaks, no more commodities on my misprision.
I have cowed so few of my native poverties and so,
I write my last page. As my voice grows faint, a new
star appears, still intermittent.

Uneven, it is yet totem on my eyes.

Taskmaster, who charged my body with breath,
take back ten talents for two given.

Break my pounding sticks.
Throw down my cloak of night.

Lay there, my prophetic speech. Be still.

Quench the implements of my voice.