The Grand Birthday

To the grand birthday

As to funeral, wedding or christening,

Summoned, we come. From our houses

We hurry home,

Antaeus touching down.

All weekend our cars

Loll on the lawn in a litter of color.

What assemble here are

So many departures.

We are bound by

What we diverge from-

The Source in his frame,

The pattern of our features.

Our flesh and blood,

We are meat and drink to us.

We refresh us.

Deep in our silver cups

In stories like mirrors

We repeat ourselves.

The past is real,

That ferocious whiskey.

This is where we were

When we were becoming.

We live in our relations.

Outside our circle

Our wives, our husbands

Look on us in some wonder.

They believed we were who we are,

Not this hurry of semblance,

These unlikely tales in variorum.

Till Sunday they withdraw from us.

But in our images the children

Are mastering every story.

They are learning how to repeat us.

They are establishing a text.

By Sunday we are all tired of us.

(While there is death

There's hope, perhaps we say.)

From the grand birthday

As from altar or font or graveside,

In our brilliant ovens we steer away

Into our other places.

Beside us

The children are growing their faces.

Though they will depart from us,

Though they will corrupt the text,

They are inheriting us.

The Source is in his frame.

We are born again.

They are who we were.

We smile at our executors.