Proteus

Poetry is energy, not fire; the reckless fall of things against
the weakness that is gravity.
It is love, an engine once constructed of the passion
in the world, the lost and loved distractions.

I would fall and love all I love forever; end time with time,
become a metre in this metre, a word shut down in enmity.
I am a clean rattling, a fresh but broken string of lies,
concealed obsessions in the myth of history.

With you I am a living vehicle, regular, descending
lighted by some absence, with the glow of winter trees,
a renaissance experiment with falling bodies,
rolled to earth to slow reality into ranges we can see.

There is a headlong rush to water, propelled with language,
the stream of anything we could consider foul.
I would crash with you, end time with death in Winter
if you would be with me as Proteus, converted in my will.

Bring me an end to make me famous, a scientist of mind,
a recorder of the spirit that is living in the eyes of strangers.
Allow me to shift so like these twins, the owners
of the sea and air; the rambling keepers of the other realms.

We would not live but for the loss of children; banish vanity
to make them stand for higher things, to signify the howl
that marks any death as something singular, to be the sign
of humour in the life of any spirit falling to its end.