as to cognitive intentions

                 The Book











Now wars and waters, stars
And wires, the dead hand in the iron glove;
The bolted winds that ride death's cars;
Guns, gallows, barracks, poles and bars;
Seem to have laboured but to fetch us love.
Planets that burn and freeze
Now wring their hands, or forced to please,
Must twine them to a dance instead:
Distraught cosmogonies
Like bad old baffled fairies stand,
Where we, your head upon my hand,
Or sleeping hand in hand, or head by head
Have closed the book of the day and gone to bed.


But body, now be deep:
Worn hornbook, Mirror of the Sinful Soul,
Or Abbey of the Holy Ghost, The Keep
Of Spiritual Valour, keep
Your foxed and wormed and rusty pages whole,
That we may read our way.
Like an old lantern by whose ray
We hope to find a better light,
Glow feebly as you may;
Be torn and tattered, interleaved,
Our chapter will not be achieved,
Until we read by touch as well as sight,
And learn to turn the pages, kiss and write.


You are periphery;
And we would be the centre, if we could
But break your circle, or could be
Without you, inconceivably
Ourselves our multitude and solitude.
You would be nothing then,
As now all other things and men
Are turned to nothing at a touch
Of hand or lip; again,
We'd seek the soul, and having passed
Through you and through ourselves, at last
Find the dark kingdom which denies that such
As selves, and thoughts and bodies, matter much.


O Encheiridion,
O Salutaris Hostia in this kind:
Until that darkness comes, be all-in-one,
Be shadow to our double sun,
But single, as the purpose of our mind.
For if by love we mean,
To seek and find a go-between
Spelt from your incunabula,
And see at length what can be seen
By some new light beyond decay:
Through you we must burn time away,
And wither with the force of our idea
The world of visible phenomena.












                               F.T. Prince


















....