A Day on Gospel Hill

1.

Can you remember dawn upon this mountain?

then we were innocent: creation was

not involved with project: we could see

with eyes of grass.

We could feel with hands of wind, of air,

how laid before us was a world of things,

real and unchanging, from which the mind could measure

imaginings.

Can you remember the hands becoming weapons,

brain's cool government of mass and light,

eyes, like diplomats skilled in languages,

translating night

into objects convenient to our venture?

the valley road, the bridge, the house, the roof,-

forgetting the noun for substance, the verb for motion,

simple as proof?

Where did we forfeit faith that we cannot keep

common and beautiful facts through the day, as the doe

accepts with her dim eyes boldly a world of forest

she cannot know?

2.

Under the shallow dark, the mute unasking

earth withdraws from image-making eyes;

under where the colored picture was,

existence lies,

Trees take in their scattered birds, each standing

alone again: on green sky, plainly now

hills wait for stars, each wearing separate sun

like a peak of snow.

Lovely and lasting forms, for a place among you

even the isolation of this burning

mind could be endured, and the weight of heart

with dark returning.

Night makes plain as dawn the affiliation

of life with matter that cannot be broken:

the patient miracle is acted out again

as though for token.

Tides of evening, include my being's smallness;

light, describe me as you move with grace

around a stripling of tree, giving its growing

a rightful place.