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Four Poems
I
There is a flame, there is a bird;
The fire blows, the singer grieves.
But I believe the sound you heard
Was wind among the troubled leaves:
But I believe the sound you heard
Was wind that stirred the leaves.
If there be pain to make one cry,
It cannot be for fear of bars.
I think dust blown across the sky
Would be as silent as the stars:
I think dust blown across the sky
Were secret as the stars.
But wind among the leaves must go
Like hands upon a broken loom,
Must find a way from fields of snow
To fields that would be white with bloom,
Must find a way from fields of snow
To fields of tender bloom.
u
Could she emerge in blood and bone
As adequate to need
She would burn skyward out of stone,
Would flower from a seed.
Legaré George
Could she inhabit nerve and hand
Attentive to her will,
She would assemble sky and land '
As God does on a hill.
She would assume contingent day,
And tour illumined night-
A star compounded so of clay
The flesh breaks into light.
Her voice would be as dews arise,
Her actual hands would trace
Their flower-like wisdom in his eyes
And heal his stricken face.
Her songs would fall, immediate
As snowflakes briefly clear,
On hearts intent to meditate
If heaven still be near.
And her amended eyes would be
Unanxious of the tide
That bears her body out to sea
But lets her heart abide.
Il
My love came to me when the windless tide
Was ebbing with the twilight to the west.
She said: "Those two gray doves have sought their nest,
That all day long from bough and leaf have cried,
But quiet now, sleep gently side by side,
Cradled in silence, and their wings at rest."
She took my heart and pinned it to her breast,
And I lay down and soon thereafter died.
She took my heart and pinned it to her breast,
And I rose up on soundless feet, and came
To give my years like leaves into her hands.
Her breast is sleep, and two white doves that rest
With folded wings, and peace that has no name
Save on her lips. I wander in dim lands.
Iv
A truth I touched but could not seize:
A leaf came down as light as these
The wind blows out of changing trees.
And it was then as if the skies
Caved in like time upon my eyes,
And broke my flesh but made me wise.
Like thoughts that fall without a sound,
It bore my spirit to the ground,
By fear of rooted grasses bound.
And it is now as if the day
Bore down upon my broken clay
. Till time and terror fall away,
Legaré George
Like wind-blown leaves, and I but go
Through snowy light on leagues of snow
To kneel before the truth I know.
Legaré George