The Abundance of Brightness

God is not unknown on account of obscurity
but on account of the abundance of brightness.
-- St. Thomas Aquinas

1.

Dante Mounting to the Rose of Heaven

Not one of us

could breathe this air,

face this naked radiance

unscathed.

Here music turns to light,

a tone so sweet

that we, dulled by

our familiar calliope,

mistake its sound for silence.

Dante, mounting to tiers of

trembling flame,

found light. Light everywhere.

Circles, wheels,

light on light,

a dance of invisibles.

The flames pulsating, as if

measuring the breath of heaven.

At the last, he falls forward,

caught in widening rings

of implacable bright.

2.

At Eleusis

Even at Eleusis,

after the long journey,

the sea-bath among the sacred waves,

the accounts of the grieving mother

and her vanished child,

at the end

the shouts rang out

like birth-cries in the throats

of the startled pilgrims, blinded

by the flare of torches sweeping

from frames of darkness.

Then silence. Then they saw.

3.

A Celebration

And then quiet.

Someone who whispers:

now we are free.

Which was, almost,

true,

but only in the way

a bird,

leaving a limb,

goes freely into

a different realm,

an atmosphere

more pure,

more transparent,

but that, too,

maintaining its fixities.

4.

The Clinging

[for those who] have beheld the Tao... gems sparkle on dusty roads; puddles appear as pools of lapis lazuli; tough weeds acquire fragile beauty...

     -- John Blofield

The I Ching calls it clinging, fire:

"Fire has no definite form,"

it says,

"but clings to the burning object

and thus is bright."