O light, you were no ornament.
You were the straightedge laid against my testimony,
the surveyor’s chain drawn tight around desire,
the plumb dropped through my ribs
to hear what truth survived the speech of virtue.
You examined without anger—
as a judge weighs a witness,
as the sea tests a harbour wall.
Then I feared you—
not like thunder in the hills,
but like the first question under oath.
You uncovered the quiet frauds
filed in the docket of habit:
the courteous lie, the mercy postponed,
the sweet intoxication of being right.
My will, that bright defendant, raged and struck.
And in the inward stillness
a word lifted like smoke from hidden coals—
thelema, the hard name of will—
and with it the statute written in stars:
not licence, but allegiance—
Love is the law, love under will.
The brighter the lamp, the clearer the dust.