T he Encolpia is a meditative book of poetry beset on all sides. Classical in craft and fierce in treatment, the book is a sonnet sequence presented as a series of different ruminations on pivotal questions concerning responsibility, degree, spiritual vagrancy, delight, sorrow, election and silence, each sonnet its own religious reliquary. While it is unlikely that individual poems extracted from a sonnet sequence will justly reveal their nuances without the narrative interconnections that drive them, samples are provided below to give you a small idea of the music and the scope. a Encolpion i. I have come to love with right and love's contention. I am selfish. I have hurt others. I am vile. I have changed Good Foresight for mauling satisfaction. I have finished in the beauty of my wiles. Respite is nothing but a frost, over expectation. I am refected by what is proximal and acute. Let the fire enter with a little light, let the iron be an invitation to a brute. If I am silent to less account and I do nothing I become part of a hundred, good by them without time or sadness but as fog and sheen. If I am severe, I confess my ignorance vaunting, I become none of a hundred, like passion, like contempt. I mend what varies, heel the small and burn away exceed. Encolpion ii. My Faith and my wisdom each hold their strong redoubt. (My Lord, in both of these, I have nothing.) In the vivid hollow is the glistered brown viperies of absence pleasure brings. I gave the whole world, all of it, to you. I cursed Myself with your voice; I diminished before your lightning. Nothing remains but the pittances. Like you, I burn through to no end even a shapeless thing. Tell me you know because your poverty understands how a thread is fast and the world is intricate how to break and cherish in the same proud flash how the cities of your impulse cannot stay your hand, when what is found in the stable come the pestilential visit turns over the quiet personhood of wrath. Encolpion xi. If I thought your slavery could stay My Heart and serve I would stand on your neck; I see your joy, I know what you adore. To hear Me is tyranny, but you run to your captors. I am only as strong as the cautions of My hurt. My small, swirled dust, what kind of God am I? There was a summer that, like a child, I had come with all the stars their quiet light to Sodom and gave them flowers and broke no dying. Yet you for all your consequence can sell your crown for a love you want now, far beyond what now can give, and burn its violent kingdom to the ground with no message to the forward towns who I will have to hear in prayer remote and impassive and be through My grave the heartache and the sound. Encolpion xviii. The postilion and his tigers disappear to a tone. The Hail, that takes no pair, turns over His cup. The city tread brings me back to still roll up the Last Night wandeldekoration. I will never have an honest foundation connected to the value that life is instead crumbing together the shock of depravities. To cherish is a moral ambition. Sometimes broke from dreaming, my imagination dead, the Romance tale embarks to a far, forbidding place where there’s no illumination and no one keeps the peace the wonders tramp away, a bedlam populace, it is there to the Herald of the Van of Little Beasts my heart lays down and virtue bring my head. Encolpion xx. How’s it going, really? Are we muddling through? Is this all we can expect or would you care to feel? Quite honestly, the last time we met, I thought we had a deal. - I don’t need any advice from you. You know, I once knew a man similarly self-enthralled and I don’t think he was for blowing out his brains but he never could quite get that the drip that remains is just the living thing that we are after all and while I’m sure you have it all figured out, yet again, is this exactly the kind of evening for a man so free a chair at the window watching the boats crown the Sea, the curtain lightly blowing, the hours of reredemain? And while you don’t need me, well, I can put you on that crest. As for the trough, that’s coming anyway, or won’t you get enough? Encolpia lx. If You and I can both betray to each do acts that contradict with worst qualities assay what justifies or acquits, the resignation counterweigh our hearts that are so passionate, by which we live and we pay, on which we founder and submit then hear me what I want to say whatever love You want to know whatever outcome cuts me quick I believe in You because the way the sun came through my bedroom window when I was happy or I was sick.