sea

MARIE HAMILTON 's to the kirk gane,
   Wi' ribbons in her hair;
The King thought mair o' Marie Hamilton
   Than ony that were there.

Marie Hamilton 's to the kirk gane
   Wi' ribbons on her breast;
The King thought mair o' Marie Hamilton
   Than he listen'd to the priest.

Marie Hamilton 's to the kirk gane,
   Wi' gloves upon her hands;
The King thought mair o' Marie Hamilton
   Than the Queen and a' her lands.

She hadna been about the King's court
   A month, but barely one,

If I gave 5 birds
each 4 eyes
I would be blind
unto the 3rd
generation, if I
gave no one a word
for a day
and let the day
grow into a week
and the week sleep
until it was
half of my life
could I come home
to my father
one dark night?

On Sundays an odd light
grows on the bed
where I have lived
this half of my life
alight that begins
with the eyes
blinding first one
and then both
until at last
even the worn candles

Now along the solemn heights
Fade the Autumn's altar-lights;
   Down the great earth's glimmering chancel
Glide the days and nights.

Little kindred of the grass,
Like a shadow in a glass
   Falls the dark and falls the stillness;
We must rise and pass.

We must rise and follow, wending
Where the nights and days have ending, --
   Pass in order pale and slow
Unto sleep extending.

Little brothers of the clod,
Soul of fire and seed of sod,
   We must fare into the silence

The rainy Pleiads wester,
Orion plunges prone,
The stroke of midnight ceases
And I lie down alone.

The rainy Pleiads wester,
And seek beyond the sea
The head that I shall dream of
That will not dream of me.

The river rises
and the rains keep coming.
My Papa says
it can't flood for
the water can run
away as fast as
it comes down. I believe
him because he's Papa
and because I'm afraid
ofwater I know I can't stop.
All day in school I
see the windows darken,
and hearing the steady drum
of rain, I wonder
if it wil1 ever stop
and how can I get home.

It did not flood.
I cannot now remember
how I got home.
I recall only that the house

A part, immutable, unseen,
Being, before itself had been,
Became. Like dew a triple queen
Shone as the void uncovered:
The silence of deep height was drawn
A veil across the silver dawn
On holy wings that hovered.

The music of three thoughts became
The beauty, that is one white flame,
The justice that surpasses shame,
The victory, the splendour,
The sacred fountain that is whirled
From depths beyond that older world
A new world to engender.

The kingdom is extended. Night

High, hollowed in green
above the rocks of reason
lies the crater lake
whose ice the dreamer breaks
to find a summer season.

'He will plunge like a plummet down
far into hungry tides'
they cry, but as the sea
climbs to a lunar magnet
so the dreamer pursues
the lake where love resides.

QUEEN GULNAAR sat on her ivory bed,
Around her countless treasures were spread;

Her chamber walls were richly inlaid
With agate, porphory, onyx and jade;

The tissues that veiled her delicate breast,
Glowed with the hues of a lapwing's crest;

But still she gazed in her mirror and sighed
"O King, my heart is unsatisfied."

King Feroz bent from his ebony seat:
"Is thy least desire unfulfilled, O Sweet?

"Let thy mouth speak and my life be spent
To clear the sky of thy discontent."

Between the rice swamps and the fields of tea
I met a sacred elephant, snow-white.
Upon his back a huge pagoda towered
Full of brass gods and food of sacrifice.
Upon his forehead sat a golden throne,
The massy metal twisted into shapes
Grotesque, antediluvian, such as move
In myth or have their broken images
Sealed in the stony middle of the hills.
A peacock spread his thousand dyes to screen
The yellow sunlight from the head of one
Who sat upon the throne, clad stiff with gems,

Let man have dominion over the fishes of the sea and the fowls of the air
and the beasts and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth.

I
A brackish reach of shoal off Madaket,-
The sea was still breaking violently and night
Had steamed into our north Atlantic Fleet,
when the drowned sailor clutched the drag-net. Light
Flashed from his matted head and marble feet,
He grappled at the net
With the coiled, hurdling muscles of his thighs;