Martyrs

Arrowed Sebastian, fountained now and plashed

In catatonic rain from the slit neck,

Snow and the groundswell your martyr blood washed

Into the marble pool for lilies to suck:

Children thumbing toyboats in runs of you

And little birds bending over for what was blood

Remember by guilt the twang of the straightening bow,

The archer's blink, the god for whom you died.

You could not know, open on gentianella,

Your arrowshafts buckling, cracking together,

Saints' blood is water and a capella,

Or children grown old limp home, or lilies wither,

Or wounds outlast weapons, or thirst that is God

Outlasts my bow that bends with the latest bird,

But knew all obscure martyrs: the wired trout,

The thonged bear swayed from a pole, the lizard

Nailed to the gate, the goose alive on the spit,

The dented mouse. O where the herb or word

For whit's ease, or unction for extreme eyes,

Or parallel eye to their eyes, promising peace

By sort of parallels from the residues

Of pain private, the privacy stained on glass?

Whoever has looked in the eyes of stricken things

Has seen the world essential, betrayed, afraid

And rolling but not in the skilful palm of the Lord,

Who stricken is in their eyes, spun by the rings

Of concentric pain, and remembering how He bled

Out of the arrowed eye of the Holy Bird.