from FIREBIRD NOTEBOOK (2)
May 27 The sky is dotted with bright stars. As I just wrote the word “star,” I almost
forgot what a star is. They become bright as the eyes adjust to the dark. I am not used to
this kind of dark.
(from one notebook to another)
Mysticism is what the eye of the lover our father shut his to see the complete frame and
grace of the man he could not share and as permitted he was taken into his own body
alone sees in his beloved. Anyone can have his own mysticism the thigh of the speed-
skater, bone enwrapped, thing-in-thigh, core-in-globe such things as the den held as
conjugal strength and grace but he must keep it to himself and so he did in divine
collaboration not universal but in the knotty shoulders of the city during the day, a polis
blinking out Psyche, her light to find Eros’ muscular surfaces, himself posed as thigh,
brother-to-brother the darkness multiplies in the epic, a mirror of the whole
circumambient world, an image of the age hidden to the notebook and the children have
yet to see
*
Gathered them into a circle the council of men the children found themselves between,
two men turned face to face, [so] that they might recall this subject according to the
ideas received in the former world and the children at the arms and legs of the apartment,
at length through the ear’s passages marriage of love & wisdom in use the rumor of
twos and these two like in like, the eye a muscle for seeing one across for man is by
creation the least effigy, image, and type of the great heaven. The human form is nothing
else and there is no ring but this house bringing one to one the infernal arches of a
doorway and so they pinned the human form to the wall to keep out the fire thence a thick
darkness upon my eyes, and [we] began to rave firebird and I around the circle to build a
wall for them if they are spiritual, blessed marriages are provided—but not until they
are in heaven and we knew this would be hard work, to keep the stars entorched and the
fires out as they multiply in the great heaven under which we were thrown we are
wheels peals, a layer of ground each a burying sound
Brian Mornar lives in Chicago where he teaches in the English Department at Columbia College. Little Red Leaves published Three American Letters (an e-edition) in 2011, and recent work can be found in American Letters & Commentary, Volt, and Upstairs at Duroc.