10

 
& then he played a brief encore   a haunted
(Chopin?) gypsy melody   an elegy
quiet, mysterious & sad   maybe
for his own people   (from Lvov)   (Beethoven

 
counterpoint)   and   somewhere
there is an axle of the rolling earth
in the heartlands   in the heartlands of
your soul   I hear that wasp intoning there

 
magnified    from the well of deep rose evening
a drone (a B-flat miner) zeroing in   on a target
of concentric colored rings   his whisper-chariot
uniting with a deeper bass   like a maestro's fledgling

 
son   down deep there   in the well   of milk and honey
where the milky Word reigns   raining upward
from Eternity   and shore to shore   a pillared
arc   arching back   high   over the makings of a day

 
I want to go there now   into the heartlands
where the wasp sings   at the axle of the earth
and wheels   like a master of the clay   an eagle-
wraith   diving toward   the dove   where she stands

 
hesitant spouse   bereft widow   (amid neglected
purple irises   beneath bent lilac wands)
transfixed   at the sepulchre   (her hands
against a rim   of cold, solid granite)

 
& hears that other, deeper voice   from the spring
through the full piano-panoply   (drift of May
silver & gold)   as a matrix of concentric waves
(streaming river-water)   melding   into a ring