The Gate to Lucifer’s Paradise

Lighting one candle

With another man’s candle_˸

An evening in spring.

~ Buson

Instead of all those candles at the Gate’s

Love Feast, white wax, flamed wicks among the fruit,

And challah bread implying mystic states

(Agape love), I spied a quicker route

To true totality.  He raised his wrists

So clearly full of veins and blood, streaked blue,

True meaning, truer than prophetic mists

Of seventh heaven, veins entirely true

When raised beside the curling black of hair,

Hair waving, dark, inside a spirit tune.

We sang together, sang together where

The Sabbath spoke with ancient lust and rune.

  He didn’t know.  He didn’t know.  Why sing

    If there’s no love?  Sing, sing of blue-veined wing.

“Singing is a lover’s thing.”  ~ Saint Augustine

~ Phillip Whidden