Prayers for One Person

I

Peace, infinity of the mind,

Be to her what Paris is to armies when they reach the Seine:

The hills before they get to them,

The towers, sunlit verticals behind diagonals of rain,

The thirst for cognac, for the squares-

Place de la Bastille, or the Concord's obelisk-

Sudden like sidewalks be the end of risk.

u

Her war outlasts the Armistice.

She is the flier who is pilot still. Again, now flying blind,

Busily takes reconnaissance.

Be, then, evolved: her breathing on the finder of her mind,

A momentary image

Like a landing field between the shore and sea,

Miasmic substance though it be.

m

Exist next summer when she rides

A fender with the motor sweet after the motor's stalling,

Fickle yet fixed, her pulse's beat

At body's speed-the "certain constant acceleration falling"-

When headlights catch the ruts ahead,

When, at her back, the midge-flecked windshield hides the wrist

That turns the wheel toward chaos-Peace: exist.