The Music of the Blood

For Nik Hoffman

I.

From that tree-hidden fane some morning of the year
In broken triumph there did run
Some ten-horned beast; and on an Island in the West
Where ninety blessed hermits keep an ancient fast,
A great bird dwells. But nowhere sleeps alone
Somnambulant spirit. I queried of a Silent One
Wherefore his ears with cottons he did plug;
He me replied: to better hear the music of my blood.
Upon my cheek with perfect innocence he kissed me then;
I wept, and weeping did my tears become a flood,
Whereon a golden acorn of an Island did it float,
And in the coves of it green turtles made a ring,
And married with those sprung of dolphin-loins;
But though ten-thousand times I had made speech
With eagle and with stone, then did I first
In Everywhere perceive the diamond-hearted Saints
Glistening like precious dew upon the Rose of God.

II.

Blood knows its thoughts. Six-wingéd hummingbirds
With human mouth and eye in that red font
Splash as in juice of grapes; they do so solemnly.
Water by nature, says Lao Tzu, is like the humble man;
Not so with blood; blood wants the God
That breathed it first, with whom it fell in love;
It needs no outlet of release; it nourishes
The very roots which anchor heaven in its stars.
Blood has not aged the soil, the soil has aged the blood;
See like how dew from his pierced side it falls?
Thereby with ancient youth the world it is imbued;
For the fifth element, contra ether, is blood;
Mind has no courser but the living blood,
Nor swims there fish in brook with such felicity
As do world-siring muses in the blood.
Honey and milk and nectar are but names
For that important harmony of blood
In which the sun and moon are round ichthys. 
Myself and nature are one god and beast;
Jung in a dream a crimson wave he saw
And war he therefore prophesied; some better auspices
Would I propound: when that last burning flood
Receives the world, all stains of it
Shall be expunged: of death and pain markless,
The world and the beloved of the unicorn
With a pearlescent flesh shall shake its wing;
Blood is a seed.