How to keep—is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch or catch or key to keep / Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, … from vanishing away?

Gerard Manley Hopkins, "The Leaden Echo & the Golden Echo"

Ask yourself when time repents precious halcyon daze. Thorough, memory chants so long the diamond ring gleaming autumn in generous waves of illumination. Carry me graceful my wildflower tracing pink tint flush upon your satin cheek, I youth between your violet guardian angel my cherry blossom seen and unseen. Golden our past in coalnight shades of burgundy purple stare heartfull into future told in repetition backward and forward we cross the barrier until we fall still in eldritch repose the Abaddon (who scorpion dresses the backward when we sewed roses into our skin).

Say what gives holy laughter crisscrossing them three kings of Afghan hounded self-measure; trigger Gemini in obscuring terror tendertight let me smudge my heart charcoal on the stage of our ballet. I draw the Magician, stepping lightly wet the morningcoated grass in olive drab caramel hair threading bare what bears carry silently when holding love warm here against my breast. Have you given all heaven neverever I will always between my lungs pleaseplease I fall I retreat into me wherever I am. I cry, my vow, heartbroken but into future distinct I sojourn the jeweled palace of fruitful emptiness and brush your hair before you sail into manycolored tomorrows I wish for you.

Stonecall gallant we whisper, shying away from timesbefore we met one evening warm in candlelit recognition: jade garrisons hide cedar among the heartbeats we kiss soft in rubypainted rewinding. For now my language doesn’t say but stretches haunting meaning yetknown I’m sorry but watercolor my fingertips are bluehearted napping bruised the jamsourdoughed doll incarnating. Gamelan rhythms my mountainchild, my sweetscented opalescent; dandelion gardens the somabreathed morning when hearts oneday close and another open. One day I will write my sayingagain but for now I dig one multitude self-chasing.

It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born.

James Joyce, Ulysses

Image: Carnations and Clematis in a Crystal Vase by Édouard Manet (1883)