And so when they stormed
The barns, broke through the door (leapt with
Lances through the dark square), they found
Old window sashes, leather straps for horses,
Which were like personal possessions that
They could not remember the struggle with,
Iron wheels lying on beds of yellow hay.
The light of the afternoon was drifting at
The dooryard, there, when, bruised in the
Battle with pitchforks and shadows, they
Turned around. Then it became clear to them,
Time was like a medium all around them, time
Was a passage, it could bequeath moments like
No others known before or expected. When
Was this! Like a page ripped off and thrown,
Like a horse that disappeared over the ridge,
And was gone. They were old. It was all
Before, the scene so longed for,
This atmosphere of the past,
The late afternoon, the swinging barn door,
Like a memorial of the world. So when
They spoke the syllables formed a gospel.
And the wind kept blindly tracking, and
There was fear in their hearts that someone
Was missing . . . someone was among them.
Sometimes when I listen, I know you are
Telling truly the story of long affections,
And I think how deep already, between us,
Is my transgression; have I only to lift my
Bowed head, for us to rise right into heaven--
To see the ecstatic face? How we are pale,
In our small glory, how wide is made the sceptre,
The dark path we’ve made the children tread
Upon . . . Now the children are standing taller,
Addressing what has been. How much to
Acquiesce, how many deaths will stalk the
Family? You are in company with the truth,
Just in the pretty attendance on these my
Chosen words. The memory walks--among those
Things consigned from life to another realm,
A tender hand has taken this bereaved one,
And that white flower. An elder gentleman,
Who is that family type, has kept this pair
Of hands, folded on the table--or curved around
The cup of precious water that, rushing from
the mountains, is our last sustenance . . .
In company with the truth, you keep
Fitfully questioning the calender; as if
These days did not dance in September light,
And the people not languish in the hour
Of disbelief--
And what will happen to us might be like
Rushing through September in the sky.
When I am alone and the great house silent
That is when I am least alone, nearly afraid
To move . . . A great presence is with me,
Bidding me take thought. How small and
Precious the drama of humankind! I know
When I look down from the porch to the quiet
Lawn it’s as if in this remoteness, so
Close within this stillness, a dreaded judgement
Waits, or a joy is overturned. Before me,
As I speak, the task lays incomplete; and
The moonlight steers my gaze to a dead halt
Upon the scene, upon the objects, like the trees,
The patterns, like the flower gardens,
The fence whose fallen stripes beckon forward
The lustrous white quality of a field--never
Seen before, but known, toward which the
Reaching hand of shadows would perilously cling.
And it happens in the inspiration,
What begins to take shape in the night
I know, when I look down from the porch to
The quiet yards beyond, that the earth and all
Of us were created from far away,
Flung away by the rueful angels, cast out
In a day of colossal mirth, lost by a girl
Pinning away for a century in a dim attic room--
I know the story of severity and hope, and
Am positioned, remotely, at a point in the long
Dialogue--immune to these dark whispers.
So that when you come back, it will be at
The table. Truth will greet me here, where
I am bowed in thought, and the landscape
Consigned to that other dwelling place
Where God has sent the sacred face of the moon.
(to be continued)
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