5.16.2006

4


Some old gaunt John sleeps in the quatrefoil,
his gaping mouth emitting tendrils – visible
glyphs, obscure and untranslatable.
A bronze rain falls, and fades into the jungle.


Providence all crumbling concrete.
Dogwoods flourish on the dripping ridge;
the old man stares into their foliage,
so multifarious, so implicate...


yet one vine short. (One like an infant cedar,
that, with wavy bowing, flecked the edge
of undulating flocks – uncoiled his rage.)
The shade arched like an echo of its brow.


I am a stranger here in Gloucestershire,
he thought. The cave roared water and light.
Was he the king? A boy lost in the night?
A shrouded sun shed May-gold everywhere.


Well-worn, he remembered the deep waves,
his forsakenness. A spiraling vireo
climbed above the fanning palm-tornado,
fluting a pathway only the far wing cleaves.


Up there, Lazarus seeks your countenance.
Dr. Saturno interprets the age to come.
The maize-god in the arroyo, the slate plum
sail into his hand; and in a trance


Lazarus climbs from a log-strewn stream
and frozen moldering. Maundering
to the cave-door, he blinks, ponderous.
Tendrils clasp his feet. He shods his dream.

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