THE FUGUE OF POEMS

Why, then, the lines of astral celebration
- sky colour, calendar and zodiac,
narrowing to the poem's needle-eye;
arrow intention bridewell-broadening
into the poem's air and maples nation
escapeless as the prisoner's looking-back
or voluntary cell-mouse?
			  There is "why"
even within the beds' quadruple wing
where to this dark the exceeding lovers lie.

He who has mastered manuals - flesh or speaking
be they - and the false ivory of rhyme,
knowing the spectral escalade of key,
forgoing fugue, holding most answers back
but the last unison or suspension breaking
tension upon the common chord, in time:
one such will know all disciplines in me.
Thus my auroras, drowning white and black;
sought harmonies I hear, but feel and see.