The Secret Splendour

Seven suns are plunging down like diamonds

To deck the body of man with, deathlessness.

Bursting the brain to an omnipresent truth,

Piercing the brows to a gaze unbound by time,

Thrilling the throat with a word which rhythms the worlds,

Gripping the heart with a oneness that is all,

Wakening the belly to a laugh of infinite space,

Unloosing within the loins a swirl of stars,

Coiling at the base of the spine an almighty calm,

They take their splendorous stations in frail flesh—

And the flesh suddenly knows itself supreme

As though heaven's roses bore dust-intimate roots!

No gods are they from foreign farnesses

But the dust's own divinity beyond

Its brief and blind and broken beauty here.

One viewless Marvel plays a twofold game,

The solar shine and the terrestrial shade,

Empyrean and abyss each measuring each:

The seven suns descending to the earth

Are the seven earths awaiting in the sun.

Page 396