A Mountain Goat Poem by Naveed Khalid

A mountain Goat

What needest thou such witness of thy name too dear
for want of word, my son, in whose tress of golden hair
such darling insights break the first light at dawn
thy myrtle crown under the cow's shed;
outshines in white bier to brave this day of e'ery looking glass 5
yore battered things by day's toil more bright that looks me through
day's old rhetoric, beside the oak, the majestic sun at my door:
of starry wheel the nightsky in the fabric of day dreams
that darkened earth's infernal grove of what lies burried with
thy haggard bones of cut-out heart for a mural, father! 10
of blood and mire our Lord in manger, o'ershadowed by a jewel
hung aloft the ghastly night with holy dread upon the sand dunes,
opes a garden in the backyard where blue-bells hang
by the hedgerow of a cottage-hill, a staircase window
is capped with sentinels of first frost her falling snow,15
for seventy long winters be still thy fair lamb in November;
a furr coat of tweed, buttons glossy, his cowboy hat on knees in ruffled feathers
shook off his head small minions of soring thumb impressions
by the green knoll; santa's mini skirt of a dragon skin at clover-beach;
somewhere near the nineveh, a cypress boat, is sailing away 20
from the golden banks of silken-satin as marigold in autumn
of thy book by the western isle, a broccoli, among hades grow
wild flowers in my bed of crimson joy, a table, a chair, a retiring room is decked ashore;
all wrapped in shroud of a star-y velorum can never illumine my shipwrecked dreams;
of white swan's ethereal Wing down the valleys deep, ah song! 25
that nightingale is still warbling o'er upon a barbed wire,
the Eagle on wings with such stepping stones at the foot
of thy craggs, O sea! ovid's veneral amorous in deep sorrows
while musing o'er the dale in silent hours of soliloquy,
this darkly drowned enigma of yore drifting dream amiss,30
goes loitering around the world, by day's divide, by nights weave
a snare of the unseen against past woe's deceased frame
some dry leaves of haystack and straw still to my decaying form abide:
yet far from the maddening crowd Montanna, Missouri, Denver Hills
of snowflakes hide from eternals by the bridge of long ago,35
marsh-mellows of hazel nuts in haystack of woods; clay and wattle-made
thistles to eternal bliss in waking hour, birds maestro sing!
tricked out of some fault lines so fairly lost scope of days
that are gone at the pedestal of thy throne, God!
that by love I define what is hid from beauty of his grace 40
the reality of the mind is oft eclipsed by worn-out time
for a hundred shadows by thy grove under the Archangel's brow.

(C) Naveed Khalid

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All Rights Reserved.
Date Created: Friday, October 11,2024 4: 11 am
*Rewritten
* drafts rewritten quite a number of times, and this one stands for 256.

Title Revised: from A Mountain Goat to A Greek God