The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God[.]

*

Although invisible, your Guardian Angel
is around you and leads your heart
so that it cannot fail or make mistakes.

*

—Abramelin¹

               All to foretell frosts and miracles,

the symbolic became his cause, the
limit his god, pushing him around
like a wall as if punching the bricks
of its gut would make creation fall
down, resound to the Universe’s
edges judgment’s trumpets, reveal the
garden at the end of heaven’s halls,
the rain’s bowing out at the end of
a despot’s gall, the third act’s sudden

               recovery from catastrophe,

the calm before the applause, but no
door he knocked, no prince whose patronage
he sought, no corridor he walked, no
floor he fell on in worship, no heart’s
conjure he worked could erase evil
from crawling dark earth, no soil could birth
what seeds he dropped, no prayer could raise from
death his dreams, no matter how deftly
American (or Un-) his bughouse

               committee of familiars, and He

Who Saw the Deep saw it first, but said
nothing of man’s curse, nor did scripture,
only the wife’s, never that the poor
husband, out of her spite, might be left
blinded by the search, the pursuit of
a life free from misery and such
emptiness not enough to quell fire’s
revolt, not when hell’s trapdoor opens
from underfoot into a whole world

               only words can impart, and then with

an author’s distortions, an absent
chronicler’s assumptions, a jealous
translator’s assertions, a learnèd
sorcerer’s artistry, and a burned
flag’s tattered banner pretending at
patriotism: everything seemed
fake, anachronistic, and he was
too late for spectacle to help or
compensate for this mistake, how so

               Faustian his fate, all for naught, for

attempting to take from temptation
its appeal, to shock the appalled’s heads
into healing their scarred minds of hurt’s
temporal zeal, to count not on the
uncertainty of existence but
its permanence, realizing that
we are not clay but stone made only
of moments, every wound carved deep
into us to transform into hard

               monuments those who refuse to be

returned to dust, those who refuse to
conform to the script of another
miracle’s performance, how what we
do above condemns our crushed bones to
eternal abuse below, souls damned
unless we seek wisdom from those who
know, unless we look upon visions
they throw to us from their art’s prison,
taking in the orphaned mercy a

               magician chooses to show mortals.

__________
¹Abraham von Worms, “Book One: Chapter Six: The beginning of wisdom”, “Book Three: Chapter Twelve: How the person or magus should consecrate himself, the prayer room, and its accessories”, and “Book Four: Chapter Four: To create visions: […]5. In beeswax and through writing”, respectively, of Abramelin: The book of the true practice of magical wisdom: by Abraham the son of Simon[,] son of Juda[h] the son of Simon: Four Books in The Book of Abramelin: A New Translation: Revised and Expanded Second Edition: Compiled and Edited by Georg Dehn: Translated by Steven Guth: Foreword by Lon Milo DuQuette, published at Lake Worth, FL by Ibis Press in 2015; pages 23, 137, and 188, respectively. Magic square constructed and consecrated by the poet following the guidance of the grimoire.