The Irrationality—LB Roland

“Oh, your thighs
are numbered:

Two

But they are
as the poles of the earth”

Lovecraft’s men would crawl
To the centre of the Earth,
Betwixt the poles
Where they glimpse the darkness,
The absence, and the insanity
Of ultimate knowledge of their place
Within infinity
Drives them to shove the entirety
Of their being back into the abyss
From whence all man come
Forsaking the structures, the strands of reason,
Allowing the privilege of entering between those mad mountains,
Being lost in cultish devotion to the cyclopean god and all that they are,
A series of formal relationships between matter and cultural significance,
Being torn apart like of old.

The Sun sets on a Christmas eve, and so it is the night,
The night when half a world a way was birthed that holy light.
With stifled breaths and hurried hearts, we light the dark outside
With joy and cheer through all the year and love on Christmastide.
Each bulb hung high with care is set to twinkle in the cold,
Each a spark to light the dark with spirit manifold.
Although as I’ve gained my years, I don’t need this day as much,
Still I swear each year I’ll try to shine on just as much.
You see the presents and the garland once meant the world to me,
But now some how I hang them up just to let them be.
I love this day and always shall, but never as I did.
Yet nostalgic tears won’t stop to fill my glad eye lids.
O holy night, O silent night, the stars shine in the sky;
I’ll hope for thee in reverie once more before I die.

The weight of a booted foot is just enough
To pin the crab scuttling, righting itself
From the black wet of the dock where it fell
Leaving my hook now clean. The blue, flanged,
Scalloped backfins paddle against the grain
To swim out from this Dainite studded sole;
This rubber tread has pinned mountains before.
The spindly, knobbly, bifurcated chela
Pinches at the vamp not even scarring the hide
That the tanner has had torn from the horse.
How the insole subtly feels the crab;
The carapace is but a barrier
Felt underfoot indistinct from the cobble.
The blue of crab and the grey of river stone
Cannot be distinguished by touch alone.
Shifting my weight as if to step, the pebble
Or crab remains so my stance is out of kilter.
A stone would persist though I stand on even perch.

The clock stolen from university hall
Hangs centred above the bookshelves.
Books yet to be opened, long since closed
And daily mail unread, ignored on the table
Are illuminated in the harvest moonlight.
Muntins cast a vague grid, but branches
In an undetermined web will overshadow
Across the room. My form is sent with them;
On my back, they too are cast. I turn to face
The moon. A light out the window catches
My eye, dim in the night by the road below.
The power that lights it comes from the only place
That power comes, and thus a thousand moons,
Indirectly reflected, light the city.
Distant houses rise in the wood with the wood
Of one substance and photosynthesis.
There is nothing new under the sun.

Six thousand years, this body remains
As one, unchanged. The love that bound
Isaac, left a bloodied ewe on the altar,
and so bound the parts to one body.

The covenant of love reigning in the land,
Forged of the same love that bound Israel,
Burned Egypt and razed Constantinople.
This body moves with that same zeal.

God is at its head, and God is love.
To love is His greatest commandment,
But love is old. Love once crucified.
This body is old enough to remember.

My body too is old. It remembers.
Love is at my head, you on the altar.