AXIS MUNDI

The world revolves around my head,
and everywhere I go is here;
but if the axis of the Sphere
is mine, then all will soon be dead.

So I'll erect a tower, and round
its masonry the earth will turn:
a steeple tirelessly will churn
the cirrus milk without a sound.

It is the path to liberty
from the loud self through power of light;
it gives the sense that life is right
and sets the jarring passions free.

Sky has blue skin. Unclothed by cloud,
the epidermis glows, a bare
expanse inviting us to stare
at it and pray to it out loud.

In dark the naked skin sweats drops
of light that tremble at the edge
of being; there's a hawthorn hedge
of milky light that clears housetops

and all the stretching limbs of trees.
No rockets take us to this skin,
no blast of nitroglycerine;
as world-exiles and refugees

from greed we build our pointed spires;
they stand in fields fenced off from fear,
a bridge from zenith to nadir,
the source of all the lost desires.