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.