CLXX and CLXXI
"To bone or muscle atrophy (I guess)" and "Attending on his golden pilgrimage"
O Splinter, Splinter, coursing up my leg,
from metatarsophalangeal joint
to kneecap, where your pain brings me to beg
that, from you, I could savagely anoint
our separation as a body ‘twined.
Will you so kindly put your pain away?
Would you be such a dear and go and find
another soul to spurn and spite and sway?
But you, like other ills, are halfway good.
A leech, at least, at something that I love.
I would not like to lose the foot where stood
the rest of me attached higher above.
And yet, as long as you, Splinter, are there,
I’d lose it right away, and call it fair.
~~~
Behold how beautiful the rising Sun!
How bright he sends his light to all who see!
In fire and creation does he run,
e’en smithing there all matters that might be!
See, how it is his light is fired forth—
what bellows bring his beauty to our eyes?
It is what he invents that finds the Earth,
what art he wrings in sunlit singing skies.
For if the Sun, his matter he denied,
and made no element within his breast,
he would no longer shine, and we’ll have died,
along with trees and flowers and the rest.
Think not your art a monolith alone—
but what, by its enduring light, is shown.