Seeing Is Deceiving

Richard Eberhart

Having fed impalpably on the ineluctable
In yearlong passion of the unfathomed,
To realign the mystery of the ineffable,

Haltingly, haltingly, in lofty clashes,
Longsight glare, in total psychic refusal,
He would not allow his eyes to see the rose.

The rose that is with blood transfused,
The rose absolute, rose of all the world,
Flower of the flesh, flesh of the very flower,


Intruding organ of most rage-potential sense,
Rich rugged rose, the years in their dark make,
Sagest blossoms that can break and bless,

He would not in a high perfection sit,
Staring the day away in anarchy
That saw a heaven in imperfection's makeshifts,

And told the world in the etcher's fine escape,
The gardens clamant in the blare of June,
Birds precise, clouds fixed, grasses interlaced

With grasses as they are, and nature had,
But crying against perfection of the sight
He broke perfection with the inner eye,

Somber, strange, amorphous, vast, replete,
And all his organs in the dark of time
Created the secret of an ultimatum.