EQUILIBRIUM

The salvaged ship, arbiter of extremes,
Balances in its hold intransigence and endeavor,
Braced in the tapering camber of its beams,
The buoyant vault is holding a breath forever.

The same wrights who manned the naves
On land in belfries and cathedrals,
Wielded the rasp and adze in polyhedral
Citadels to dominate the waves.

Above the choir the wheel of the hoist
Has been marooned, abandoned in the spire,
Below the deck a slow continuing gyre
Chants in the silent catenary and the plangent joist.

Massive chains pose no threat to the converted
From lanterns hanging weightless in the wings,
The quivering keel — a pendulum inverted —
Offers stability while it still faintly swings.

Calculation and faith mitered in defiance
Of decay will never let the pendulum rest,
Scientia sine arte nihil est,
Nor leave Art derelict in the wake of Science.

SHIBUMI AND THE BAROQUE

Astringency alludes to thirst;
In blank walls, parched and pursed,
Rises a longing for gilt lost and accursed,
A restlessness molten under the minimal.

Asperities of the eye provoke
A hidden friction, fire without smoke;
Flat planks, arid and matte, stoke
An aberrant heat, crouching and animal,
As flanks sweat where once the fever broke.

The frieze will melt whose cold laminal
Folds, reduplicated and reversed,
Animate a warmth in scrolls that swell, seams that burst,
Buttresses fly, buttocks conical and chiral
Pile athwart arcs like soaked
Carcasses in stone throats that choke,
Where veins sluice and tesserae spiral.

Austerity flung onto the pyre will
Rise engorged, elaborated at a stroke
Into a basilica livid and viral:
Cavernous, carnivorous, baroque.