Classic Poem

I You are the scorched columns, the green nave which struck
thirteen times by lightning continues to thrust mon chevalier
Saint Michel into the clouds. Below you, the windows are
pleated in the Roman stone: blades of green grass hung with
fine moss and delicate bouquets of lichen. . . . You have danced
with your hard feet backward, as in Indian dances, through
the dry stalks and the silver milk-pods which tapped at the
cups of your knees; over burnt ground and devastation,
through bush of hard bloodless berry where no other
vegetation could survive; over soil closed like a fist about the
roots of flowers; over violence and dry rot; under grapes gone
to powder in their fine skins. Not plumes of the sea did you
offer, but gaunt feathers, bare rigging of ships, desert foliage,
wind like metal in the nostrils, wind dark, rich, sweet in the
mouth. Who shall say I have not known you if I have sat with
the pillars of the church growing about me, air thin as glass
and stones like firm lids upon my eyes? I have seen the bronze
statue seven times larger than a sheep above the refectory
whose windows open like a silk fan, and the black saint reeling
with clouds, dripping with vines of fresh rain. I have seen the
candles lit at the altar's prow, so simple that the carving
became a desecration; and the shadows of the church rising
and breaking on pure cones of candle-foam . . . and you like a
candle lit at the extremity of the ermine sleeve: a bright wing
in the night, a flame bleached out in the sun.

II There is no wilderness in America as savage. None with the
tough bark of the trees as black, and the flowers solid and
sweet between the teeth. Nowhere else does flesh become to the
eye as odor in the nostril. Under the stripped trees the earth of
this country lies in strong furrows. The tongue of the plow
carves avenues of loam. Spring nineteen-twenty-six and the
soft bodies of moles lying like small black panthers in the trail
of the horses' feet. Only here is the earth among the roots of
the trees printed with toad feet, needled with moss, dark and
inseparable about the fine bones of the fern. There is this then
to set between the bitter cold and the summer. This to return
to and discover like new leaves at that season: spring, and his
hair falling two ways on his forehead; tassels of fresh rain, and
his mouth.

III

Death is a hand under the chin lifting the eyes to set again at the core
The petals that have fallen into the caverns of men's voices,
The loose ends of sound that are slow hoofs passing with hair swinging slow at the fetlock,
Stroking soft hides and haunches and proud necks arched to the darkness —
To make a music rich deep strong enough to rouse you,
To lead armies bitter enough to serve you,
With cries of beasts on the wind like the shattering of fresh bells.

Dolphin-wing in the wind, wind in the wing with the sea falling,
Night is a full-feathered fan to cool you.
Ah, turn now and hear them: sound, color, and taste making a strong way to you!
Do not be dead, take all that is gentle and warm to you;
Turn now to the warm mouths to embrace, the hot wine red in veins and the glasses,
And this heart, this heart in the breast shriveling like a burning flower.

IV

There is a miracle in the hot road and the long slow heat of the sea in the open window.
How else have the heavy hills fallen among the geranium leaves and the coarse stems of the plant?
Or how could the sea move thick in my blood and the dust rise?
There is a small clear sea between us in which anemone, sea-plants and petals move and ripple and stir murmuring.
Through the pale fans of the fish and the weaving weed
There is a sea laid like a small cool hand between us.

LAMENT

Here I sit quiet and blind in the sun
With new leaves coming wet on the boughs in the light
And in darkness and the dark sap singing
Aaron, Aaron, I would be a great tree over you
Aaron, I would be air running like a sea in your nostrils

The wind is a shawl drawn on the points of my shoulders
Shaking loose in the wind with me, the sky is split on the chimneys and
Aaron, I would be a dark valley curved to cradle you
Aaron, I would be a thin vessel to bear you a fierce wine
To tables where dry bread is eaten
Aaron, Aaron, I would be a soft word in your mouth
When the cold comes to shatter your bones