I.
The cricket in the telephone is still.
A geranium withers on the window-sill.
Cat’s milk is dry in the saucer. Sunday song
Comes from the beating of the locust’s wings,
That do not beat by pain, but calendar,
Nor meditate the world as it goes round.
Someone has left for a ride in a balloon
Or in a bubble examines the bubble of air.
The room is emptier than nothingness.
Yet a spider spins in the left shoe under the bed—
And old John Rocket dozes on his pillow.
It is safe to sleep to a sound that time brings back.
II.
So you’re home again, Redwood Roamer, and ready
To feast … Slice the mango, Naaman, and dress it
With white wine, sugar and lime juice. Then bring it,
After we’ve drunk the Moselle, to the thickest shade
Of the garden. We must prepare to hear the Roamer’s
Story … The sound of that slick sonata,
Finding its way from the house, makes music seem
To be a nature, a place in which itself
Is that which produces everything else, in which
The Roamer is a voice taller than the redwoods,
Engaged in the most prolific narrative,
A sound producing the things that are spoken.
III.
Eulalia, I lounged on the hospital porch,
On the east, sister and nun, and opened wide
A parasol, which I had found, against
The sun. The interior of a parasol,
It is a kind of blank in which one sees.
So seeing, I beheld you walking, white,
Gold-shined by sun, perceiving as I saw
That of that light Eulalia was the name.
Then I, Semiramide, dark-syllabled,
Contrasting our two names, considered speech.
You were created of your name, the word
Is that of which you were the personage.
There is no life except in the word of it.
I write Semiramide and in the script
I am and have a being and play a part.
You are that white Eulalia of the name.