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VII.  Return

 

The tides creeps among the rocks;

the lyre is against the before-dawn dark skies

while the furrowed sea curls upon itself

and about long, dry  tongues of sand,

Sleep songs held by fold of water-sinew

and graved by glare of night-light

swung our in search over meniscus-sleek

wing-sheened sea.  Pull back!

Tide bore surges to the rim of walls

and throws back the light of the seven

stars climbing, moon in sinking, while

sleep alone grips at empty dreams,

self-sealed.  The crevasse is full,

and under wave bow hides plenitude.

The aching break is crossed;

tomorrows’s hope devoured, then

redeemed a death, a proxy, near,

ever near our washed, wrung shores.

All flawed, striation worked:  the marble

grain leads eyes along age-tight muscle

up; and from below the iron-sweet spring

flowing red, issues back and over turning purl

through bird hung grove, lapping at

sodden roots:  a constant warm whirl.

Then as hard as horn and just as dark as it

gored salt-sting into groin, flack pressed

with here cries, yet tear-smoothed limbs heal.

Steps without future or past.  Scramble over

scree.  All bare in the instant, silent

and in turn on wheel, shaped a form

the last:  leaning a little this way,

then that.  Views change as it reels.

Come together with speed the last.

Hoofs of white oxen on the road stamp,

shaking flies from heads, from eyes,

glancing at the crumbling redoubts.

Ah, doubts like motes circling

in the flat ray-pierced owl-light of the no

days left in the last geometer’s

drawn curve withal:  the constant

numbers ascribed divine, threaten rift,

a dam break or rampage rush,

over-pour all and end engorged with mud.

Thus grasping a perfection from weight

of silt turned to flawing.  As with lyre

cord stretched over water for moon

to fall with high-above ear pitch

snap, so waves, net-loosed, ride

with wind to ungarrisoned shores.

The week is curved to an end, and

numbered spheres flow, refract on

musk-sweet, mere-bitter ebb, that is:

from the sea, she, and with corona whirr.

Harmony would wax from the deserts

of Ur. Oases of land here to where

we begin again: then we say:

I am come into my garden, where

birds turn preened, eye-plumed,

to branches as a sleep-chirp quiet

echoes as from a cave, a slow rite,

a lime to lure night to cover them

 

                               Even so…