The Labyrinth of Falling Olives

From time alone is man defined
As the diffused flash of a holy duality.
Brother to ripe olives, a likeness of reality,
Lucid in face, yet mortally blind.

Ebbing spirit and cohorts around:
Pluck these eyes with a degree of care.
For feeling your hands lays one bare�"
To know its touch is to know the mound.

Our embrace is a wicked aspect of fate�"
An animal breeze clouded as amity.
Some recoil at their light, at their brevity,
Yet these ponderers fall ever straight.

What star beams to wilting lovers
Who adjoin for this brief act and jest?
A way-lighting keeper for ease and rest,
Or a gaze behind for what love uncovers?

What limb hangs and endures to bind
This dream and moon-this eve entire?
When wind lofts slumbers' soothing lyre,
Number it among the illusions of the mind.

What cruel earth cracks with greeting
While swallowing our infant yearning?
O coming mass, O firmament ever-churning,
Bound and seize us! We are fleeting!-

Fleeting into the dance of earthly gloom,
Winding about�"pining behind the flesh-
Reifying the world in gesture and thresh.
What sum am I, branch�"again in bloom?