Thistledown and the Cornucopia

O Thistledown,
child of the west wind's sigh, when you sigh! with your deepest breath,
lighter than the dream Hermes forgot
beneath his winged sandals—
you drift beyond my grasp,
yet heavier than memory,
for even gods could not bear the thought
of your vanishing.

You are the "lighter than my burden,"
the whisper of dawn
after the pyres of midnight.
You—
you do not know what cornucopia mean?
but you are it:
a vessel that overflows with unsought plenty,
a chalice of unrotting desire,
spilling the milk of lost paradises.

I pronounced you—
as oracles pronounce storms.
I uttered you into being
as the old Brahmin breathed OM
and the first cosmos unfurled from sound.
You were my secret doctrine,
my mystery, my fondling, my dear.
my fonding unshaken by doubt—
thou art the pulse beneath eternity's shroud.

From my window of mortality,
I saw not your form,
but your reflection in the trembling air—
the jewel of my unpleasured peace,
the crescent in the darkened sky of my heart.

You asked once,
"Do you love me more than your breath?"
Ah, what breath, my love!
The breath you have never breathed—
I have breathed them all.
The poisoned, the perfumed, the holy.
Each one a prayer,
each one a wound.

You—
you are the one who dwells
millions of light-years beyond
the city of bemired men,
where even angels blush to tread.
You are the one—
the Honored One,
the Amour of the Little Man, little women, little child,
the whisper behind the silence
that begot creation.

And yet, Thistledown,
you tremble in my palm—
fragile as the truth I never spoke,
as fleeting as a monk's temptation.
You are the echo of that first laughter
before shame entered the garden,
before the serpent grew weary of wisdom
and the fig leaf turned to shadow.

O Thistledown, O, Garland of centuries!
the gods have forgotten your name,
but I have not.
I have carved it upon the inside of time,
beneath the clock's weary ticking,
where love hides from chronology.

You are the moment between heartbeat and hush,
between the star's death and its afterglow—
the shimmer that remains
when divinity exhales.

Once, I saw you
in the mirage between two seasons— in between two screens!
the dying summer and the unborn winter—
you walked barefoot on the horizon's eyelid,
and the sky bowed like a priest before a miracle.

Even the wind grew jealous,
for it could not bear you long;
you were too tender for velocity,
too infinite for direction.

I have worshiped you
not with garlands or incense,
but with my undoing.
I have offered you my thought,
my pulse, my disbelief.
You are my ruin and my resurrection— can you believe it? ruin and resurrection at the same moment?
the cornucopia of absence,
the feast of hunger itself.

When I say your name,
the syllables dissolve—
not into silence,
but into an older music
that even Orpheus forgot to play.
Your name is the hinge of two eternities,
the point where being and non-being
kiss without shame. I prounanced it, once and for all,
Anilas! Alas Anilas,

O Thistledown,
when the sun forgets to rise,
I shall seek you in the interstice
between night's final breath
and the unborn light.
You will be there—
a shimmer,
a tremor of divine indifference,
still lighter than thought,
still heavier than loss.

And if I never find you again,
know this—
your absence is my inheritance,
your silence my scripture,
your vanishing the only proof
that I have ever loved.