Valentinus

I couldn’t see the colours of the world 

 And more, I couldn’t know the unseen 

  Rainbow was unseen, blindness 

   Of blindness, bathed in blended tone. 

    Colour was a coating only, a thing possessed 

     By things, and painted on at random. 

Until tangential, as a natural 

Diffractor, you sprayed multichrome across 

  My eyes, my heart – fanned the blank beam 

As a bird in springtime spreads 

    Shocking feathers from stretched tail 

     And reaching pinions.

So Valentinus, simple Bishop, tender to 

 The players of a fatal circus, passer 

  Once of parchment hearts, became three things 

   Head, heart and body, spread apart in 

    Spectrum; Rome and Dublin and Madrid, and through 

     The curved eyes of poets became an everything.