Song and Sunlight

I have always wanted the song and the sunlight;
I would have ridden, had I the choice, tame horses.
But sometimes we are subject to unknown forces,
And sometimes there is no difference between day and night.
And sometimes, I am convinced, we make decisions
That do not rule out the possibility of visions,
That do not lead us in the tame mundane world's courses.

I never thought to taste the dark or the pale grapes;
I thought to live merely in the bright purple empyrean.
But then, I wonder, what dreams came to him- Endymion?
Did he know that no thought of him escapes
Into the modern world untouched by the travail of Keats?
Did he know that he would be one of the goddess's sweets?
I hardly think that he knew what his fate turned on.

So. I would have wished for things, but cannot have them.
Or, say, that I cannot have the narrow and the sober lines
That boundaries to things I would not handle define.
I may on occasion lift from the ground a flawless gem,
A gem without light, without luster, without fire.
I may on occasion write of love without lust or desire;
I may on occasion do something that is very thin and fine.

But, more often, a flower that I began planting once
Will get out of hand, and in the garden sow its own seed.
They will all blossom with the most unholy speed,
And soon form something so thick that, though it hunts,
Not even the wind can find its own way through-
Something that is not bush, nor yet flower, but true
In ways I cannot define to some strange crown and creed.

Too often I open my arms to what is a charming love,
Some form unmarred, some form of true lord or lady,
And in their hearts grows something wild and shady,
Something that cradles them below, and hides them above.
Their eyes grow wild, and flash with strange passions,
And if something moves them, 'tis not what my mind fashions.
More I know of Sparta than of clean Athens or calm Arcady.

I would have tasted but the sunlight and the bright song;
Unimpressed, my mind visits me instead with strange wine,
And offers fruits that could be diabolical, perhaps are divine.
I feast on them as I must have feasted on them all along.
When I was dreaming of sunlight, something grew in darkness;
When I dreamed of lushness, it withered to starkness;
And what is Apollonian grows also on Dionysus's vine.