Vision from the Scrying Glass – Sam Robinson

September 24, 2025

Issue from obsidian, barbaric yawp of age

Disarticulation of all things, head from torso, wall from ceiling

Coherence rendered by a chop, and we will not achieve our dreams

My paper is a mirage on stone in July heat, shimmering by

The scrying glass, the reflecting pool ringed with purple

Flowers, black flowers, nestled in a mirror thicket & concrete

Extended heavenward, I cannot count the windowpanes or openings

Hewn into the stone exterior, inlaid with pictures

Of the neighborhood behind me, thus the nonexistent only

Seeing what the scrying glass presents to me as a seer

Subject to the anvil’s treatment, beaten to a runny red

Film coating the reflecting pool on which walkers pass

On their via to granite carved with verses from Proverbs

Exhortations to the eternal science, a young man will break

Bones in five places, between which a sigil will be

Drawn as a shade, or a map to it, on the other side

Of the scrying glass, the reflecting pool of ice water

 
I’VE GONE

The soothsayer’s recompense is a recline to the horizon of existence
Wooden bench, reflecting pool, castle of the church across the way
White dog, orange walker, my skin is turning copper green
Tangled glass menagerie, the breeze snakes in between my shirt
Skin, and hair on my chest, flesh covering the heart open to sutra
Open to any intervention from the outside, rock falling earthward
At terminal velocity, exploding the head and rib cage, to complete
Oblivion of tormented subjectivity, the sin eater with stomach
Full to bursting, a bubble, a membrane around a void, nothing
Less, nothing more, just a void inside the shimmering circle without
Center, circumference, radius, whatever measure, O, Giordano!
Did you save me or dig me further down? Why ask a question
That I know the answer to, following the Frankist V I am still
In the first half of my life, descending into all manner of sin
Spending two weeks to watch a pillar of community at midsummer
I betrayed his daughter the moon by loving the Sun, and we held
Each other and all others in a festival around the anniversary
Of a nation whose law was free grace, and the naiads swam nude
Four feet apart, with the breasts of one touching another
I cannot weep upon nostalgic poolside reflection, only sigh drily
Remembering that beauty dug a passage through the earth emerging
With Hesperides and severing all contact, leaving my rib cage
Open to the heart sutra, profession of that sublime emptiness
Hidden and evident in all things we encounter. I yawn having
Half-starved morning, fed on only coffee and a little chocolate
The museum sits outside my reach, where a clay dress bears
Inscriptions of the sun wheel when all was written before
Languages we understand (as such) but languages we understand
Languidly, as tongues caressing each other during the psalms