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.