Part 23 (1/2)

kept reeling in at a steady speed, the verges dripped.

In my hands like a wrested trophy, the empty round of the steering wheel.

The trance of driving made all roads one: the seraph-haunted, Tuscan footpath, the green oak-alleys of Dordogne or that track through corn where the rich young man asked his question Master what must I do to be saved?

Or the road where the bird with an earth-red back and a white and black tail, like parquet of flint and jet, wheeled over me in visitation.

Sell all you have and give to the poor.

I was up and away like a human soul that plumes from the mouth in undulant, tenor black-letter Latin.

I was one for sorrow, Noah's dove, a panicked shadow crossing the deer path.

If I came to earth it would be by way of a small east window I once squeezed through, scaling heaven by superst.i.tion, drunk and happy on a chapel gable.

I would roost a night on the slab of exile, then hide in the cleft of that churchyard wall where hand after hand keeps wearing away at the cold, hard-breasted votive granite.

And follow me.

I would migrate through a high cave mouth into an oaten, sun-warmed cliff, on down the soft-nubbed, clay-floored pa.s.sage, face-brush, wingflap, to the deepest chamber.

There a drinking deer is cut into rock, its haunch and neck rise with the contours, the incised outline curves to a strained expectant muzzle and a nostril flared at a dried-up source.

For my book of changes I would meditate that stone-faced vigil until the long dumbfounded spirit broke cover to raise a dust in the font of exhaustion.

Villanelle for an Anniversary

A spirit moved, John Harvard walked the yard,

The atom lay unsplit, the west unwon, The books stood open and the gates unbarred.

The maps dreamt on like moondust. Nothing stirred.

The future was a verb in hibernation.

A spirit moved, John Harvard walked the yard.

Before the cla.s.sic style, before the clapboard, All through the small hours of an origin, The books stood open and the gates unbarred.

Night pa.s.sage of a migratory bird.

Wingflap. Gownflap. Like a homing pigeon A spirit moved, John Harvard walked the yard.

Was that his soul (look) sped to its reward By grace or works? A shooting star? An omen?

The books stood open and the gates unbarred.

Begin again where frosts and tests were hard.

Find yourself or founder. Here, imagine A spirit moves, John Harvard walks the yard, The books stand open and the gates unbarred.

(1986).

from THE HAW LANTERN (1987)

For Bernard and Jane McCabe

The riverbed, dried-up, half-full of leaves.

Us, listening to a river in the trees.

Alphabets

I.

A shadow his father makes with joined hands And thumbs and fingers nibbles on the wall Like a rabbit's head. He understands He will understand more when he goes to school.

There he draws smoke with chalk the whole first week, Then draws the forked stick that they call a Y.

This is writing. A swan's neck and swan's back Make the 2 he can see now as well as say.

Two rafters and a cross-tie on the slate Are the letter some call ah, some call ay.

There are charts, there are headlines, there is a right Way to hold the pen and a wrong way.

First it is 'copying out', and then 'English', Marked correct with a little leaning hoe.

Smells of inkwells rise in the cla.s.sroom hush.