second act

The poems of “Second Act” answer the “Poems of Kinship and Absolution.” As the second act opens, the hero’s work is not completed, only just begun. He makes a contrite oath to the Queen he had rejected ("intact, entr'acte"). He quests through elemental wounds opened by the Mother ("Can it be me,") to cold, alien encounters with a mismatched Beloved ("Outside lunar base,") whom he had passionately, tragically desired. He flirts with meaningless, judgmental, self-important intellectualism and glimpses the phantasmic mirror of himself as cynical grandstander and rapist scientist ("'Geocentric,'"). Finally he accepts the burden of his disappointments, hurts, and failures, and begins living for himself ("chain"), happily and deliberately choosing his own commonplace, measured practice of submission to the Sacred Feminine.

Read along:

1. intact, entr'acte
2. Can it be me,
3. Outside lunar base,
4. "Geocentric,"
5. chain

Amar Shah · second act