Rouze up O Young Men of the New Age!
Set your foreheads against the ignorant Hirelings!
For we have Hirelings in the Camp, the Court & the
University: who would if they could, forever depress
Mental and prolong Corporeal War.
—from Milton by William Blake

In the Cave of the Heart shines a hot, interior Sun.

Sometimes it is veiled by leaden clouds,

Sometimes by a mist of dull, tarnished gold.

At times the clouds are a muddy olive color;

At other times, the color of dried blood.

But beyond the veils of despair and complacency,

Of shapeless intoxication and grim spiritual will

A find gold Sun is roaring with knowledge

Over an incandescent ocean, heaving in mountains of divine energy,

The tidal-waves of the Aeons: passing as we watch them

But eternal in the Core of radiance, before whose face

We rise, and pass, like voices. Whatever word is heard in that light

Stands like a pillar

Between earth and sky.

So now the Violet fear and the White fear.

Now the full Beast driven from the heart, rising in front of us,

And us knowing him.

Open Hell. Seal not the door where evil dwells.

Stir the banked coals, the immemorial anger, the mirror-bound suicides,

Lizards on a red cliff at dawn....they flex the sinews of their wings,

They take delight in their own beings....

I say all will be pressed into service.

I say all will be required to fight.

The passive, the coward, the innocent will be trampled down,

Unless locked in single combat with Antichrist

In mountain solitude and stillness.

Invoke, therefore, the war in your marrow;

Call on the fight you were born with, that enemy

Whose lie is cut and tooled, precisely,

To cover your single truth.

Pick targets. Each man is alone with all men

In this night of war. The conglomerate form of Death

Stands guard on each human door,

Solid to the bullet, and the chisel -- like those cliffs in the Sinai

In which our skirmishers discovered, still living

The imprisoned forms of men!

© 2002 - Charles Upton
All Rights Reserved