Garbled thoughts, of a confused mind

Simultaneously, as soundlessly,

    Spontaneously, suddenly

As, at the vaunt of the dawn, the kind

    Gates of the mind fly open

To its world beyond, the gates of the time,

    The noiseless gate and the ivory gate

Swing to, swing shut, instantaneously

    Quell the nocturnal rummage

Of its rebellious frond, ill-favoured,

    Ill-natured and second-rate,

Disenfranchised, widowed and orphaned

    By an historical mistake:

Recalled from the shades to be a seeing being,

    From absence to be on display,

Without a name or history I wake

    Between my mind and the day

 

Only this moment, wholly in the right,

    As, in complete obedience

To the light's laconic outcry, next

    As a sheet, near as a wall,

Out there as a mountain's poise of stone,

    The world is present, about,

And I know that I am, here, but alone

    Within a world, and rejoice

Unvexed, for the will has still to claim

    This adjacent arm as my own,

The memory to name me, resume

    It’s routine of praise and blame,

And smiling to me is this instant while

    Still the day is intact, and I

Am sinless in my beginning,

    Still previous to any act

 

I draw breath; that is of course to wish,

    No matter what, to be wise

To be different, to die and the cost,

  My mind, confused, dark as midnight

No honest equal, my accomplice now,

    My assassin to be and my name

Tis burnt of dreams, of thoughts apparition

   Fragmented fixed, contemplation delusion

 

    For a lying self-made pity,

Afraid of my living task, are dying

    Which the coming night will ask

So cold, the earth cakes the tomb

   The thrashing of the thunder, tears do form

As dying await, my fate is sealed no turning

     Solitary in life and death, the powers deemed

Decayed, forgotten, life expired