Homunculi

Aside the flames toward breaking dawn,
still dark
No cock-crow yet
nor alarm
We stand and watch
as wood smoke takes the air
all smoke and beauty to breathe
Right fair

Again I am moved
I watch
and brood
The smoke takes me
to a worldly womb
of speech and wounds
in its thick gray plumes

Vain, here you too shall corpse
Wild, here you too shall die
I shant
Not I
I foresee
I prophesy:
and children are in my second sight
become homunculi all around us
all white
and upon that white
further white
and I, one of them tonight

I cannot stand to witness the coming of the thrice-split glory
those gory Kings as they descend
no!

I shall into the woods
I will flee from here
and never return again
to fireside and smoking sparks
to the sound of beating drums
From the plains I will run

and within the woods: freedom
and amidst the trees: ecstasy
like one feels who ascends
within a dream, unleashed, all cadence and grandiose wings

all lungs but no need for air, the wings lift and beat
in the dreams of which I speak
the wings lift and boom over plains and woods
over mountains and thence
higher! till one sees the curve of the Earth:
our sweet circle
our first mother

Rooted here upon the ground outside the fire
I turn in and see
flame-burnt homunculus,
the dough-man duality
the sweet-eyed curse
grinning from the afterbirth of the slain image therein

Split, I shout,
doppelganger thou
Split you are!
By whom? And how?

And the blade and that Man who stares down from the north, all eyes
sees too, I know:

Upon the flame a body in twain cut at the chest, then down low toward belly goes the cut and then, what?

I leave it

I run, scrambling, to the woods
a screech-owl behind me

There I will be safe
There will I learn how
and take freedom from a spruce’s crooked bough
the wolf’s howl my dowager
my feet my plow

Read the Lyric from the Beginning