Poetry |

“The Oracular Mirror” & “In the Mountains”

The Oracular Mirror

 

 

The oracular mirror

interposes

a moment

in hazy indistinction,

 

the many

now appear mad,

have seemingly hacked

mind’s code,

 

the minority

which is not a minority

mail messages

to themselves

 

in preparation

(dying?)

of the field

of action —

 

so, in concealment,

clean and polish

the mirror,

metal,

 

till the mind’s light shines

            like the mantis!

 

 

◆     ◆     ◆     ◆     ◆

 

 

In the Mountains

 

The void under the boughs

up a slope, down the sloes,

 

in the ancient day

I walk the mountain ridge,

 

hanging out on those rocks

there circa 166 BCE

 

a rogue group of druids

engaged in direct mystic practice

 

composed oral texts

describing their experience

 

which were transmitted

only to dedicated, interested parties

 

before the knowledge was lost

several generations later,

 

but it was that thing they do,

as I sit on the same rocks now,

 

that I fathom

by mammalian sense, sitting

 

a while [

                                             ]

 

and nobody knows

the abstruse black depth

 

of the breath

and air energy inhaled,

 

what futures

pass in steep succession

Contributor
Michael Begnal

Michael Begnal is author of the collections Future Blues (Salmon Poetry, 2012) and Ancestor Worship (Salmon Poetry, 2007), the chapbooks Eight Memoranda (Adjunct Press, 2025), Tropospheric Clouds(Adjunct Press, 2020) and The Muddy Banks (Ghost City Press, 2016). He has published two books on the Stooges, The Music and Noise of the Stooges, 1967-71: Lost in the Future (Routledge, 2022) and Death Trip: Iggy and the Stooges, 1972-74 (Reaktion Books, 2026).

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