My Temple

Ask me of my temple? If you would know the temple that lies
In no region but that which exists in the realms of my mind-
(Truly the most real realm in some ways, though from the eyes
Ever concealed)-then you must seek, until you will find
Some quarries of a stone so pure a white that there hangs
All about it a song of the Graces from Greek myth,
For not so white were the garments they dressed Aphrodite with,
And they mourn that across that old worship a death-knell clangs

So that they cannot take the stone and craft new clothes.
But, as I said, you must find, and you must know, that stone,
And imagine an artist with the talent of a hundred Michelangelos
Sculpting it until every corner rang with the true and silver tone
Of the chisel's soul-do not tell me that chisels have no souls,
For the carving of that stone would be sure to give the tool one-
And then you must imagine it carved, completed, shining in the sun,
Fretted as delicately as a Swiss cheese, and as full of wide holes,

For the wind is a welcome visitor and a guest in this, my home,
And wanders down all the corridors, and in and out through the doors.
Doors I shall have, and a great, shining, near-transparent crystal dome,
Though formalities, since the hurricane through every tiny hole roars.
But you must imagine my temple in a place where there never comes
Any wind stronger that that which strokes a gentle trembling leaf-
Not because the winds have any particular reason not to wish me grief,
But simply because every breeze there with languid amusement hums,

Dawdling like a connoisseur between the paintings that hang on each wall,
Images of sunsets that have never been and I know never will be,
And some sunsets that could never, as well I know, exist at all,
Images of green-winged dragons flying over a dusky purple sea.
The winds curve around the marble statues, all impossibly white and gleaming,
And every now and then loose a little whistling sound of appreciation
For the sheer nature-conquering beauty of each separate artist's creation,
And murmur and chatter to each other, and wonder if they are dreaming.

But they are not dreaming. This is a temple to all that I find wonderful,
And that means I can have art here that overarches each artist's reaching hand,
And here I can have that which the sculpting hand can never pull
From the mists of inspiration, the artwork that every creator actually planned.
Here I can have tapestries that depict in shifting colors Aphrodite's face,
And the Tuatha de Daanan, tall and silver with their silver voices
Spilling from out the cloth until each languid wind goes mad and rejoices, 
And their joyous madness floods into chants that drown the bright place.

Here is a room, a perfect circle in the way I think that circles should be,
With a perfect pattern of a star-because I like stars-in the very center,
And above it are a hundred lavender butterflies wheeling and flying free,
Forming a waltzing pattern that the winds and I, without breaking, can enter.
There I would stand, and then conjure up new, blue-and-black butterflies,
And flames that would lick and shift around me without breaking the skin,
And amorphous things that most to Lovecraft's imaginings are akin,
And the gentle maiden who behind each of Shelley's last lyrics gently sighs.

Can you see it, the flowers and the water and the thousand unmentioned things?
Do you want to go there, to soar and sweep and pass through the endless halls,
To feel the brush of swaying incense-filled censer and of hippogriffs' wings,
And to smell the shades of wondering light that come spilling down the waterfalls?
Perhaps you do, and then you are welcome to come and visit me in my home,
Where part of me is always standing and saying or doing something clever,
Calling patterns out of the silver chaos that will endure as close to a forever
As I can conceive, before it all dissolves and then spins away like dancing foam.