To the Cloud Juggler

What you may cluster 'round the knees of space
We hold in vision only, asking trace
Of districts where cliff, sea and palm advance
The falling wonder of a rainbow's trance.

Your light lifts whiteness into virgin azure ...
Disclose your lips, O Sun, nor long demure
With snore of thunder, crowding us to bleed
The green preëmption of the deep seaweed.

You, the rum-giver to that slide-by-night,—
The moon's best lover,—guide us by a sleight
Of quarts to faithfuls—surely smuggled home—
As you raise temples fresh from basking foam.

Expose vaunted validities that yawn
Past pleasantries ... Assert the ripened dawn
As you have yielded balcony and room
Or tempests—in a silver, floating plume.

Wrap us and lift us; drop us then, returned
Like water, undestroyed,—like mist, unburned ...
But do not claim a friend like him again,
Whose arrow must have pierced you beyond pain.