Lanthanum 10.7

7

So spring comes in, comes in moist morning glow
across this gawky adolescent chaos - a girlish,
coltish land of cluttered yards. In baby-lambish
lambent air, that temple-dome on Morris Avenue

smiles toward the young sun her honey-gold reply,
& Henry is quietened with flighty V-swarms of half-
memories. Phantom birchlands of Karelia (Nabokov
tamarack mnemonics) summon a Kievan panoply

of iron bells. Upon their tidal drone he would lift up
Byzantium in both hands, and, kneeling, offer Ilion
to impress Empress (haloed in sheen-cape of a trillion
eyebrows’ dolphin-leaps). From rudimentary cliff-top

he would lean his shade across a continent,
raise his Juliet-Eurydice from harbor-grave –
two ghosts re-muscled in one clamshell wave
(one pearl-encumbered comber). Affectionate

fundament of every wedding is, this tout-monde
pre-imprinted printemps (haunted brood-nest
rook-a-coo)... just so the template-test
of each vocation is, an infant meekness (curving

round). Mercy & truth are met together;
righteousness & peace have kissed each other;
truth shall spring out of the earth... mother of
each sunburnt thorn, high-hearted counselor –

Hagia Sophia of the blood-soaked cottonwood.
How scarlet veins of mute servants filter through
vast fields of birth-pangs (pain-pinioned, labor-crew
planet)! Walk me toward your equinox, ochre redbird.

3.20.12