Because always the muses are heard

in the whispers of the half-yellow hills floating awake

and also in her whispers, so eager to be aloof from me.

Because always the pen-arm desires

to be subservient to the crowing of a 

far-off rooster,

pierced by its distal cries 

summoning the blue fishing towns

upon the surface of a strange canvas.

And every man and every maid

yearns to have their tale told 

through me, the poet incarnate;

I, who have stalked about primordial 

fairy lands in their dress and makeup;

I, who have also woken to the

whispers of a thousand different muses,

discovering that nothing is pedestrian,

that all bears the mark of

ineffable tragedy,

powerful ebullience:

most importantly, a god's

cavern's depth.

Because in a thousand lives I have lost her

and will in a thousand hereafter.

Because she lies dreaming in the crudest objects,

between us a tacit understanding that I should

document her wanderings there, 

beyond the veil in dream-town,

beyond all common vision and beyond my flesh.

Because always the muses are heard

within my skull:

that is why I endeavor daily to freeze

sullen ink upon the page,

why the lonesome crags endure

the incessant lashing of the sea:

that all that colors this human space

might in my ink-games dazzle

and bespeak the world entire.