something for holiday weekend

from near the end of long poem Forth of July. (For some reason Blogger doesn't allow for spacings within lines, between words... so you'll just have to guess where they are, or read the original - see link below.)

8

With dove in one hand and flower
in the other she is Spring she
lifted him from Sea of Galilee
to the top of Mount Moriah

where he danced a sun-dial
in circles a sparrow or
goldfinch singing Time Now
Here from my hands All fly free

*

And the weavers wove a barge
of reeds to float to the delta
where a child of a Sheba
and slave bore the scourge

of the lash into the litter
where the line met lightning
and blood met water tightening
a sandstone gall (pennyroyal bitter)

*

The linen like clouds
molded to the face
congeals a last
thunderstorm rolls

drums and trumpets
light hoofbeats girlish
Scythians mold each wish
from twigs the mordant sets

*

Sunrise by the garden tomb
enters as through oarlocks
of a slave's galley she knocks
lightly and the gloom

dissolves and the stone grows
lighter and the Man of
Sorrows' eyes open (La
nuech vai el jorns ve he says)

4.24.2000



(entire poem here, in pdf. format : Forth of July )