Collected Poems

Over a stilled landscape, over towers

And masts and smoke-plumed chimneys;

Or turned the very earth, unleashed

From itself, a roaming fugitive

Beneath a constant sky Then came

A sudden brightness over the world,

A rare winter's smile it was, and printed

On my cloud carpet a black cross

Set in an orb of rainbows. To which

Splendid nativity came—who else would come

But gray unsporting Reason, faithless

Pedant offering a bald refractory annunciation?

But oh what beauty! What speed!

A chariot of night in panic flight

From Our Royal Proclamation of the rites

Of day! And riding out Our procession

Of fantasy We slaked an ancient

Vestigial greed shriveled by ages of dormancy

Till the eyes exhausted by glorious pageantries

Returned to rest on that puny

Legend of the life jacket stowed away

Of all places under my seat.

Now I think I know why gods

Are so partial to heights—to mountain

Tops and spires, to proud iroko trees

And thorn-guarded holy bombax,

Why petty household divinities

Will sooner perch on a rude board

Strung precariously from brittle rafters

Of a thatched roof than sit squarely