Incantation

I

The ground dove stuttered for a few steps then flew
up from his path to settle in the sun-browned
branches that were now barely twigs; in drought it coos
with its relentless valve, a tiring sound,
not like the sweet exchanges of turtles in the Song
of Solomon, or the flutes of Venus in frescoes
though all the mounds in the dove-calling drought

I. ANCIENT OVERTURE OF HÉRODIADE

The Nurse

(Incantation)

Abolished, and her frightful wing in the tears
Of the basin, abolished, that mirrors forth our fears,
The naked golds lashing the crimson space,
An Aurora—heraldic plumage—has chosen to embrace

What I remember is the ebb and flow of sound
That summer morning as the mower came and went
And came again, crescendo and diminuendo,
And always when the sound was loudest how it ceased
A moment while he backed the horses for the turn,
The rapid clatter giving place to the slow click
And the mower's voice. That was the sound I listened for,

i
The World without Imagination

Nota: man is the intelligence of his soil,
The sovereign ghost. As such, the Socrates
Of snails, musician of pears, principium
And lex. Sed quaeritur: is this same wig
Of things, this nincompated pedagogue,

I

The dialect of the scrub in the dry season
withers the flow of English. Things burn for days
without translation, with the heat
of the scorched pastures and their skeletal cows.
Every noun is a stump with its roots showing,
and the creole language rushes like weeds
until the entire island is overrun,

I

From a blue keg, the barrel's thumb-tuned goatskin,
the choirs of ancestral ululation
are psalms and pivot for the prodigal
in a dirt yard at Piaille, are confrontation,
old incantation and fresh sacrifice
where a ram is tethered, without the scrolled horns,
wool locks and beard of the scapegoat,

Thou twist of gold, woven so curiously,
Be filled with warmth and urgent tenderness,
And cool not on her throat’s white nakedness,
Like metal death, but burn insistently,
Reminding her of me!

To save her from the serpent’s little eye
I set a stone of blue chalcedony
Within a cunning loop—so it shall be
Aware and mindful when her lashes lie
Untaught of danger nigh.

To keep her from the dragon’s hungry tooth
In seven laps the quorls were subtly twined;
From seven rivers grains of gold were mined,

On Hearing Kelley’s Music to ‘Macbeth’ O melody, what children strange are these
From thy most vast, illimitable realm?
These sounds that seize upon and overwhelm
The soul with shuddering ecstasy! Lo! here

Had I a man’s fair form, then might my sighs
Be echoed swiftly through that ivory shell
Thine ear, and find thy gentle heart; so well
Would passion arm me for the enterprise;
But ah! I am no knight whose foeman dies;
No cuirass glistens on my bosom’s swell;
I am no happy shepherd of the dell
Whose lips have trembled with a maiden’s eyes.

I
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

In sober mornings do thou not rehearse
The holy incantation of a verse;
But when that men have both well drunk, and fed,
Let my enchantments then be sung, or read.
When laurel spurts i' th' fire, and when the hearth
Smiles to itself, and gilds the roof with mirth;
When up the thyrse is raised, and when the sound
Of sacred orgies flies: "A round, a round;"

Midmorning like a deserted room, apparition
Of armoire and table weights,
Oblongs of flat light,
the rosy eyelids of lovers
Raised in their ghostly insurrection,
Decay in the compassed corners beating its black wings,
Late June and the lilac just ajar.

Where the deer trail sinks down through the shadows of blue spruce,