Do you remember the Eighteenth dream,
where genesis and ruin through a rose convened–
that day, our rekindled spirits in twilight wept,
drunk with the rapture’s limbic, sweet attire,
and your breath, half heaven’s, half where sorrow slept,
bore me through Paradise, then down into the mire.
The same that hardens hearts, yet makes divine
that exhausts the soul, yet refines–
The road to freedom winds through iron chimes
where consecration and loss recede in altered lines;
though in future, the fourteen-fold heavens whirl as aerialists
on Apollo’s imperious thumb
and no riches distill but the madness
that is called Love, that is called One–
That Love which leaves an empty glass,
and silts thought beneath what never knew;
It fades into the Uncreate at last,
and sees itself become but You.
The subtle body unwinds quickly and impassioned
and merges unbridled into all that’s imagined.
© Priya Atiyolil 2024
