Here you will find thePoemStage Directionof poet Conrad Potter Aiken
It is a shabby backdrop of bright stars: one of the small interstices of time: the worn out north star northward, and Orion to westward spread in ruined light. Eastward, the other stars disposed, ? or indisposed; ? x-ward or y-ward, the sick sun inflamed; and all his drunken planets growing pale. We watch them, and our watching is this hour. It is a stage of ether, without space, ? a space of limbo without time, ? a faceless clock that never strikes; and it is bloodstream at its priestlike task, ? the indeterminate and determined heart, that beats, and beats, and does not know it beats. Here the dark synapse between nerve and nerve; the void, between two atoms in the brain; darkness, without term or form, that sinks between two thoughts. Here we have sounded, angel! ? O angel soul, O memory of man! ? And felt the nothing that sustains our wings. And here have seen the catalogue of things ? All in the maelstrom of the limbo caught, and whirled concentric to the funnel?s end, sans number, and sans meaning, and sans purpose; the lack of meaning has a heart-beat, and the lack of number wears a cloak of stars.
