“Lo now,” said Arthur […] “What go ye into the wilderness to see?”
—Tennyson

‘The bar was our altar.’
—Caitlin Thomas

             *

The deep temptation to upraise the glass—
to bring it to your lips
and change your mind
one cellular conversion at a time

an alchemist believing in the forms
he can’t discern except as outlines
shifting in the gut
like cellar ghosts

for something in him haunts—
the spirit of the still, reflective pond
is undermined by stirrings of a whirlpool

and under that—the vacuum

             *

The waking world is not enough
yet how can we, its images, presume
to cast our eyes against
our own projection?

We seek another lens
and some of us could swear we find it in
the circle of the surface of the draught
glimmering

We seek a state that mirrors the fragmented
vision of the vessel—
a vision that contains
the vessel that contains

             *

And some nights I can almost
believe I hold the grail
in my hands

no more delusional
than those awed knights who sought the cup
as though it were a trophy

only to learn the torch
is better out of reach—that peril
can be squandered

and faith, if it convinces, may be put
in blindness having its time

as much as sleep