WINTER ' FOURTEEN
-Ah, so you are a believer
-I have made the observance but no longer do so
-Other rituals perhaps…
-Let us say I believe in a word’s incarnation
-That’s merely a mannerism
-Yet it is affirmed
-In the flesh sir, in the flesh
-Disputable I think
-And in that is your satisfaction?
-No, in that is my dilemma
His seedy words. His doctrines.
Yet if the self not incarnate the word…
What will this day incarnate? Some compatible form? Some paradox only a living faith might resolve?
He would say day is night’s grandeur revealed but on what revelation may I lay down my obedience?
In the noise of day Homer’s music resides.
Audible day and this my aubade. I will make no broken music. Mine to be the sonnet in stone as in
those cursive manuscripts. Hail morning! I greet you thus. Lips to the flute, hand to the hand-drum – let
there be new rhythms. Word incarnate in the bell of a sound. Gull’s cry or child voice.
And I will tell of the trembling. As no other has known it so shall it be. Word upon which and from
which..Bell’s treble also. Sea-surf in some soft curving.
As it was in the..
Beginning! Beginning! Ah, but surely this is day’s grandeur also? Antigone’s cry (We are Roman or
Greek in our circumstances and choices).
Audibility of my song to child and gull.
Word: a fount, baptisms. By water transformed. Thus to the sea of language I go. Where even as I walk
my heels make music (And in the echo dwells the echo of an echo) Refute that! Or embrace it unto your
betterment. Sweet gulls of joy sing to me.
And from the mothering surf…That in a word…After echo on the air. Audible.
That unto us be these things of the world. And unto the world be these acts of ours.
The act, the subtle gesture dormant in the unspoken and unmoved. The act: see it as a theatre of the
mind. I have adhered, I have performed. Priestly in gestures and modes yet secular to my companions.
Already they gather about me-and I see them gathered.
Yes, unto me be these things of the world.
O sires of Sion, o children of the transubstantiation! You also within the compass of my mind. Forefathers
of cunning, I am not less than you would have me be. In the flesh sir, in the flesh.
As aforetime?
As aforetime so hereafter.
Can it be other? –no, it cannot be other so let the usurpers tremble (I see them in their bothersome
The Linnet's Wings