7.16.2006

16


Far-off rehearsals of a whippoorwill
send Oblomov into the summer deep.
Yearning's sister is eternity. The steppe
is brother to the sky. So still


the planet's perihelion : so beaten round
the concave of the heart. Its cup
so plenished with pleroma-envelope
(reverberant bell-boom of circum-sound).


I am but a poor herdsman, a dresser
of sycamore trees
, bespeaks Hobo. The priest
(amazed) beseeches him, leave off, desist!
His plumbline oscillates from nothingness.


Its long suspension seals the summer rain;
the swingset's rusty interrogative
repeals its requiem (equable ruth).
A whippoorwill replies. They will remain.


Across the rolling distances, a prairie
butterfly makes delicate, indifferent way.
Zigzagging here and there. A monarch, say,
or viceroy : his plangent rule a mockery


of rule, his slip of flight a sweet retort
to blind and dutiful raison d'état.
He's gentle evanescence, only that -
an evanescent elegance, the earth's éclat.


The sound of the whippoorwill penetrates
the humid summer afternoon. Late summer,
later afternoon. Oblomov twists an ear
of wheat between his fingertips. He waits.

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