Nature swells from herring to leviathan,
from the hodmandod to the elephant, so,
divine Art piles mountains on her hills,
and continents upon those mountains.
—Samuel Palmer, 1828

I. Hymn: “Veni, Creator Spiritus!”


Since—since—since Brahms,
nothing has been written equal it,
gasped an eccentric American.

Spitting on the floor
does not help you to be Beethoven,
snapped Mahler.


II. Closing scene from Goethe’s Faust


all that is transitory
is but an image


a world presented 
and fashioned step-by-step—

it will be actual,
there will be no paraphrase,
no similitude and images…


what actual need is there of notes?
“I can only say it once more by means of an image”:

hemerocallis is
a Goddess’s dark orange chalice,
in the blue beyond
the blessed clouds


God (Gustav Mahler) looked
and saw that it was good.

Eros is Creator
of the World.