If one could think of setting out, closing
Behind him the door of the house, on a journey
From this night window, if one could think
Of being lifted up! Washed clean in the grey light.
Take hold, my audience, for this has been my
Witness. The scene is starting up, it stays, it
Never vanishes . . . for this is in eternity
Where truth is caught in the finite expression.
So one could not set out in the night,
Cannot walk the terrain like an apostle--
But is kept with staring eyes, kept in thought
About the world. Unruly world! Like a host
Of angels . . . dire repetition in the winds.
Such is the humour of the quiet hour,
The moonlight on such an unswervable course,
Drawing out of the leaning trees all their
------------------------------------former strength,
Taking back the color from the whimsical
--------------------------------stalks and weeds,
Asking the spectator at the window--what
Has he saved? What autumn day is this to be,
Breathed upon the morning glass, returning
Like the ravaged body to the memory?
Ah, these trees are an ancient, spectral witness!
What blessing can he give? In the soul
There is a voice, shared in alliance with
The whipping wind, the shoutings of devils,
There is a voice without warning, way beyond
Recall, a voice that could fill the stadium with
Awe, the vocalised prayer with the power
Of atonement, the martyr in the sheet of fire,
To let the angry sky recall its host of
Winged horses, its cloud-heads and riders,
The columns that came to expunge the desert
Sands, the nightmare pagan history and its
Lurid folio pictures, the gaping crowds and
Gameboards, stacks of ornaments and mementoes
Piled uselessly in the attic, these strange-shaped
Utensils--all of this we conjured up like a
Spectacle of doubt haunting the heart of the
Beast, these glittering rows of lights on the
Highway shooting through the eternal night,
All brought to the present scene.
What blessing can he give? To the trees
Caught like this in the wind and the light,
But to enact a wordless plight, in a
Pantomime of grief, and lift his face from
His large hands and let fall like the husks
Of some animal life, that had hung from black
Boughs, this gesture of renunciation--
He was fighting in the act of desolation,
Walking back down the road to the white
Gas station with the rotating red sign, with
His jacket in his hand, and the sky overhead . . .
From afar it seems the memory has a cause,
Determined in such obscurity, pitiable like the
Roadside flowers, or the rank flowering of the
Grass blown askance in the hot summer wind.
With the irony in his position he would rip
The sheet from the very stars. But he is languishing
In the heroism of the moment, he is alive.
For we care nothing about our origins, the
Totality of vision is like an instrument with
Without use here. There is always something to
Do, because the earth is totally lost in the
Wide universe, it is travelling in the sunbeams.
How else catapult this strange man here,
Who is a party to no mystery? The whole
Cosmos is derived from these local conditions,
Utterly finished in the greeting--
But we care where we are going, and
Therein lies the desolation of the field,
Upward to the sky from the blue cornflower;
Until a rarefied springtime you will see
The trees fly away, and the clouds come down--
The picture of the road, like a snapshot, yearning.
In a different way, life is being kept,
Like in the locked drawer of talked-about
Reminiscence. Constantly, my most constant
Piece of advice was this, headlong in praise:
To sit down in the wreckage; but no, you
Never cleared the space, in the wretched,
Wrecked and never-visited dwelling places,
But cruised on into a dilapidated autumn.
The cloud in the glass twisted into a fierce anger.
You are the master of an unruly mob--
Voices claim you from every room. People see
You from across the street and don’t even
Come across, so well do they know
-----------------------------what you will say.
And it isn’t long before some ghost of a fellow
Breaks you at the knees, or you imagine
Birds conversing in the trees.
It is the world that is deep in perdition,
Experience that counts and though you’re handy
With the image . . . down you go --
Into the time-locked arena.
(to be continued)
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