The restless Rest Note keeps a-tumbling on. There's kind of a plan, sort of a pattern...

10

 
The wave of a smile curves around a cup
of tea, or stony rooftop in Byzantium.
The figure of refreshment is the same:
a logic of enchantment, welling up

 
to flight.  And where the oscillating stream
unrolls its mesmerizing equilibrium,
and where the venerable broken limb
crosses the field of vision with a beam

 
of motionlessness... there, in wilderness,
a path begins.  We found ourselves in jungle
as in a vagrant viper's glose.  Angel
or jaguar, Eve or Jonah in distress –

 
a riddle curled nine times around the brain
which left us haunted at the boundary, or
hunted in the deep – mocked in our quandary
by monkeys in a tree (paean to pain).

 
I'll be buried in the King's highway,
mumbled the President.  He tore his robes
on thorns.  In spite of everything, the globe's
my home (he muttered on) – another day.

 
The tragic dénouement was understood,
foretold from the beginning.  Son, my son.
"For joy they set out then, self-knowledge won
and Eden, lost and found again, for blood."

 
This was a span that spun itself, around
the fire, tiers lofting sharply side to side,
behind the dark – a little brook of tidings
riveting those pilgrims (lost, star-bound).

                            
                *

 
... and over the vapid, frozen void.
Unexpected extremities arose
for arrant voyagers – harsh lozenges,
alien cones – acres of celluloid

 
cindered to the stump.  Lucky Lincoln
had a major war, he groaned in green;
here, all I can afford are byzantine
piss-ants, Brazilian mosquito drone.

 
Edith... cat-scent cut him short.
Janus-face of the forest, grim balance
of forces.  Azure echoes?  Second chances?
Primitive injustice (quick unnatural dart).

 
Sounds... resound.  Keep looking, looking,
drooping (droppings show).  The way.  Humble
servant : your hand : knotty, Sheba rumbles,
from far; abstracted, you will find him – wakeful,

 
seeking, near at.  Zee.  Not far behind –
ahead.  You hear the sound of it – a wash,
awash, a waterfall.  And we are there, by gosh.
We made it – we, the deaf, the blind.

 
They'll tot him up someday.  The bravo rings,
the smoke, marvels.  Kid Saturn in underwear
– so saturnine (behind the curtain there,
in Oz).  Antiphonal, just balancing.

 
As a single star, unmoving, at the crown,
sheds a blue light, encompassing;  as a union
of two sets foot, revolving, toward a sun;
as the tale spun, as a voice began.