the eccentric Col. Percy H. Fawcett

 7


  
 After the walls of Byzantium tumble
 and Captain Gago crashes – after
 Percy among the jungle cats
 writes his last letter – in autumn,

  
 after a six turns out to be nine
 and Labor Day is done –
 you will come into your own.
 The way a Pope goes home again,

  
 or in a rusted iron cemetery
 people find their poetry at last:
 the way Pushkin-cat (after a feast
 of ghosts) returns limping and weary

  
 but (for the ninth time) still alive –
 the way a buried sun (like an innocent
 in jail) shines, and the dark is darkened
 to an utmost day of judgement – weave,

  
 then, birthright song, like a final dance
 which is secretly beginning:  deus
 exam out of a columbarium – rose-
 dust mandala-magnetism – salience

  
 of clay mourning-dove, or an ocarina
 crooning out of silence – begin then,
 sundance:  welded gate of Stephen
 into Jerusalem's birth-labor day

  
 of summer sun-heart – you double-
 squared orthogonal octagon of em-
 braces, circling toward a rustic M
 of iron-risen Rublev-gongs – rubl-...


    
                                    6.6.99

(- from Forth of July, v. 2 - The Grassblade Light. see line 3 above. ***now how the heck did I know that, then??)