1.
Face without aspect.
Serenity.—Charm.
All who share flesh
In you are rehearsed.
Like fallen leaves,
Like loose gravel.
All who make outcry
In you are silenced.
Rime grown over rust—
Over blood—over steel.
All who lie facedown
In you are risen.
2.
Beggars’ and doves’
Lonely run of scales.
These would be your
Clothes laid out over
A run of trees?
Groves’, copses’.
Books and temples
Returned to us—you rise up.
Like a secret escort
Pine forests rush by:
—We hurry!—And won’t let you!
Using a goose foot
He christened the earth to dream.
Even as an aspen
He rushed by—and pardoned her:
Even for having a son!
Beggars sang:
—Dark, O, dark are the forests!
Beggars sang:
—The last cross is cast off!
God is risen from the churches!
3.
O, there’s no fastening him
To your symbols and cares!
He slips through the least chink,
Like the sveltest gymnast …
By drawbridges and
Migratory flocks,
By telegraph poles
God—escapes us.
O, there’s no schooling him
To stay and accept fate!
In the settled muck of feeling
He—is a grey ice floe.
O, there’s no catching him!
Set out on a homely saucer,
God—is no tame begonia
Left to bloom at a window!
Under a vaulted roof all
Waited the judgment of their Master.
Whether poets or pilots—
They all despaired.
Since he’s one on the run—who moves.
Since the great starry book
Of All: from Alpha to Omega—
Is a trace of his cloak, at best.