The Coming

I knelt with the pigeons in the hay,

I, a child, on the Sabbath day-

Sober pigeons and all white,

Like nuns praying in the light.

"God!" I said, "I wonder why

You don't climb down your steep blue sky?"

The birds were chanting in the hay

When Someone knelt where sunlight lay;

He'd eyes like songs deep in his face

And a beard on his chin like soft white lace-

A kind old man with a dusty coat

And hands that drooped on a violin's throat,

Till the first violin I'd ever heard

Wept at his touch like a fallen bird.

I too was sad, it made me cry . ..

For then I knew that I would die.

I'd die and leave my sunny earth!

Then what would all the sun be worth?

Who would love each shiny toy,

And climb my pear-tree like a boy?

I wouldn't shout when day was done

And see trees tangled in the sun.

I'd die, and never understand

Why soft blue flames should bite my hand.

Would grown folks keep each glossy stick

That I had found where the woods were thick?

Could they build houses in the sand?

And who would hold my mother's hand?

In a storm her hand could make

Lightning run and drown in the lake,

And thunder hum like a tired bee-

No one knew these things but me.

Who would think her lap could hold

Sleep, and a cookie in a fold,

A sugar cookie like a moon? . . .

Mother's eyes were filled with blue,

And only I could look way through

Into the love they held for me.

His finger pausing drew a moan,

And I saw Mother there, alone.

She was old and far away,

Sinking in the loosened hay.

I called to her and called again,

But she was only mist and rain.

And still I called, until I knew

That even those I love die too;

Till, kneeling there, my very bone

Grew sweet with death-and I had grown.

Now the hay was mountain-high-

I thought I climbed it to the sky,

And waited there on the top of the Hill

Where the great red sun stood stark and still.

The earth at my feet was warm as a breast

That rose and fell and leaned to the west.

I stood a woman, lithe from the ground,

With music twitching soft around. . . .

A man's full call, and I could see

The great sun throb, till deep in me

It dropped, a warm and living heart.

Mine the panic and the zest

Of lips long drinking from my breast.

As they pressed,

My limbs grew brave, my fingers wise,

Holding small and clinging lives.

The children that grew out of me

Were all that I could never be.

With music striking chimes around,

When I was old and I was done,

I sent them marching to the sun,

And the brimming sky as I looked up

Was like a great Communion Cup.

There was a murmur when I died,

Hands were trailing on my side;

But lying in the chilling sand

I still could hear His flowing hand,

Could feel the earth creep into me... .

I stretched myself into a tree.

Out from the hollow of the sky

Years like chirping birds flew by.

I withered in the heat one day,

Then in May,

In the secret of an hour,

I was a flower.

I drank the ages with a lust

And shed them as the moth its dust.

While He played, his fingers pressed

Triumphantly, and with a zest

That caught the hum of cities round

And rose to an appalling sound.

I heard the thunder of the trees

Surging always, and the seas

Pounding through the tender throat,

Till the violin in his coat

Broke into a wild sad call. . . .

I watched the snuffing out of stars,

And on the sky a million scars,

Each one a poem and a death.

Earth shook beneath the feeble leaves,

The brittle moon broke on the trees,

The shattered sun crashed to the ground

And light in splinters lay around.

Yet the ruin seemed to be

Wonderful to me.

From the dying there is wrung

Beauty never sung,

And with the passing of the song

Holiness flowed along.

His fingers dropped and he had done

As gently as he had begun.

The violin quivered and lay still

As a rabbit slain on the breast of a hill.

In the morning of the Sabbath day

He smiled at me and went away,

Left me kneeling as before

With the pigeons on the floor,

But I could feel down deep in me

Rhythm like a moving sea.