The Machine of the World

Anthony Doyle

And as I came wandering, ponderously,
down some rough old Minas road, rocky, potholed, 
and at evening-fall the rusted peal of a bell

mixed its bronze moan with my crunching footsteps,
paced and crisp on the stones; and in the leaden sky
birds were hovering, their charcoal, corvid forms

slowly dissolving, as if swallowed back
into the greater darkness coming off the mountains
and from my ownmost, disabused self,  

the machine of the world unveiled itself 
to me, who would sooner have recoiled on sight,
just turned and ran at the very prospect of it.

It gaped before me, majestic and circumspect,
and none but the purest of sounds met my ears
and a brilliant light unburdened my glare-worn eyes, 

soothing pupils baked by constant, painful
inspection of searing wastes and deserts,
and mind exhausted by contemplations

of a reality beyond the reflections
watching from the pool over which it leans,
lost in the face of mystery, in the abyss.

It opened to me calm and pure, inviting
what meanings and intuitions there remained
to one who had used up a life’s-worth already

and had no inclination to recover them
if only to retread, forever and in vain,
the same sad unscripted peregrinations,

but here it beckoned to them, one by one in train,
to ruminate upon this virgin pasture
of the mythical nature of all things.

Or so I was told, though no voice was heard,
or wind rush, or echo, or simple percussion
to testify that one, up on the mountainside,

addressed, in colloquy, this listening other 
—nocturnal, miserable—, with these uttered words:
“That which you seek within yourself, or beyond

your own restricted being, and has never
revealed itself, or feigned revealing, but coyly
withdraws further and further from perception,

Mark it now, watch and listen: this abundance
vastly richer than any pearl, this science,
sublime and formidable, yet hermetic,

this total explanation of all life,
this nexus, primordial and singular,
so elusive it forever slipped your grasp,

impenetrable to the ardent inquiries
that long consumed your mind…see, contemplate,
open your bosom and let it come in.”

The most superb of bridges and high-rise towers,
all that the workshops of men conspire to design,
and once so drawn take form and far outstrip

in distance even the widest striding thoughts,
the resources of the earth harnessed to our will,
and the passions, and the impulses, the endless torments,

everything that defines terrestrial being,
creaturely being, down to the animals, 
to all organic life, and beyond that still,

to the rancorous slumber of minerals and ores,
it swirls around the globe and is swallowed back
into the strange geometry of the whole,

and the primal absurdity, its mysteries,
and towering truths, taller than so many 
monuments erected in the name of truth;

and to the memory of the gods, and the solemn
sentiment of death, which flowers on the stem
of even the most glorious existence,

it all presented itself in that same flash
beckoning me to its august kingdom,
finally bared for human eyes to see.

But as I hesitated, balking before
that miraculous and startling appeal,
for my faith had waned, and even my desire,

the most minimal of hopes—the yearning
to see dispelled those folds of blackened cloud
that still encroached upon the sun's bright rays;

but as moribund beliefs scrambled to the front,
summoned from retirement, could not muster
sufficient verve to reanimate that neutral face

which I along these roads have shown the world, 
as if some other man, no more the tenant
who had occupied this body decades long, 

had seized the reins and stirrups of my will,
which, fickle as was its wont, curled itself shut,
after those shy, ungenerous flowers

that are, in themselves, both open and closed;
but just as "late" is often worse than "never,"
and the belated gift is greeted with disdain,

I lowered my gaze, listless, uncurious, 
declining to claim what was freely given,
there for me to do with as I pleased. 
 
The most peerless darkness fast descended
upon that rough old Minas road, rocky, potholed,
and the machine of the world, its invite rebuffed,

recomposed in a shrinking whorl and then withdrew,
as I, trying to measure what I’d spurned,
continued on my way, hands wrung empty.