With Closed Eyes Before Arising
by Robert Frost

I saw in new dimension
without my ears and eyes
a measurement so gloriously grand
beyond the sea and skies . . .

        From cloudy hypnotropics
        of both sides and beyond,
        there was magnificent music-
        (otherworldly music!)
        hazy, elegant, and purple
        with fat brass saxophones and jingle-jangle guitars,
        silent wooden vibrations slinking into blue coastal dreams,
        sandy cowgirls adrift on Texas floods,
        misty ballerinas and flaming red cornflake girls,
        quirky gauchos and fat men asleep in bathtubs,
        ancient stones marking miles for the horse,
        rusty barbed wire bleeding onto white concrete walls,
        blue Terraplanes and green Manalishi,
        and church pews alive with swingin' singin' Southern Baptists!

        All this music faded
        to eyelid images
        of glowing lava floes
        and majestic glaciers
        giving new form
        to drifting continents,
        begging blind men with cups brimming,
        great African migration,
        searing heroin rushes like mushroom detonations,
        beautiful collected works of European master painters,
        divisive walls of varying dimension and purpose,
        floating geometric shapes in scarlet, bright white, indigo and safety yellow,
        military might on display for angry little smiling men,
        images of civil disobedience and infinite possibilities,
        and a warm awareness of solutions and absolution,
        rapid scrolling strobe-like images
        of thousands and thousands and thousands
        of mathematical computations, chemical formulas
        and cool jeweled heavenly floors.
        Images of lives just beginning
        and those in their final moments -

        new life in fertile bellies before even mama's hunch,
        lives ending in fiery tombs,
        violent shallow graves of starvation and genocide,
        and others just quietly slipping away -
        silver spoon-fed lives of privilege,
        lives of captives and castaways and throwaways,
        and lives of those oblivious to their own ongoing demise.
        Life and death by degrees . . .

        all of this flowed effortlessly,
        and I was so tempted-
        by the truth
        of medicine,
        merchants,
        and the Church;
        and I learned with absolute certainty
        that technology enraptures,
        ensnares,
        and enslaves.
        I was newly alive
        with fresh hope,
        revitalized idealism,
        and gentle laughter.
        And as I smelled my fear,
        felt my heartbeat,
        and tasted my own blood,
        I observed not just the effects of, mind you -
        but actually touched
        genuine healing
        and changing
        and forgiveness
        and redemption . . .

        All this grand and glorious clarity -
        (as if seen through God's very eyes!)
        and it evaporated away
        in a heartbeat!

. . . I saw in childlike wonder
with patience and with hope,
the nature of these mysteries through
my mind's kaleidoscope.

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