MAY . . . our glassgreen golden souls pause,
swirl in the golden knot
where flush betrays, and spills off bones
within sinsurrus; Claribel wearies marries Icarus,
ichor of us in the eyereal blast;
white orcus
mights with caliban, the victor in red.
(Those are girls that fill my eyes.
I fear only the wind.)
Yet none return from the turning pool
till first they whirl
down the moby's mouth;
without white grace from the lips of Cirque,
the foamtorn eye land sights thrust east.
Sew, we go into the knot . . .
Our kind keens in the dying van.
Though we were never the first to wake,
with equal feet we weightily pace,
the horses of the day deliver us
with a frigid shake
at the gaping room along the river . . .
Ministers chant our canticle, rubbing their hands;
long booms our glowing bell over the main . . .
The darkness swirls above the frozen lake.
Slow tapers wane, our faces grow wax . . .
And all this time we seemed
floating, floating like innumerable plastic flowers.
We journey in the slowchanting boat
drawn by swans straining at the neck.
The truth is,
we were abandoned by our friends still in the garden
when the candles were burnt out
& day was no more jocund with his flowers.
Our golden fruit being then too ripe,
we burst apart; for ripeness is not all.
We must endure our unripe spring,
we must endure our last cold leaf.
& must endure the hollow trunk, the blasted tree.
And when our ruins burn about the root
and when her breasts stretch high to reach,
we must shed our fruit: we bear
to endure our valley of dry bones.