Atomic Theory

Man like a runner gasps between cloudy poles,

Birth and death receding forever before the eye;

Aware of interval, of breathlessness alone,

And the blind motion.

Fear is the rowel in the side of the runner,

The dread of oblivion more terrible than famine and fire.

The loins of the runners are locked in the shadow of awe,

The sons of the loins are gestures to stifle the night.

(Give me valor and I have no need of gestures:

Valor is running sterile between two oblivions.)

I absorb light, I know flame and ice;

Body and brain drink deep of the wine of days.

Through the five tunnels I pour the outer world

For the inner god to circle with my name.

Upon bone and blood, upon every atom,

I impress myself as intaglio incised in stone.

Atoms bearing grooves may be troubled in space,

May seek known mortise and remembered edge.

I etch my thoughts upon the living wall, I set my seal upon

the atoms.

If the impress must tremble in space, if the intaglios blur,

Then far in advance I relinquish the will to endure.

I have laughter for patterns that feed the sidereal winds.