I am sick with worry when you call. You tell me a story about ears How the doctor asked about your earaches Peered in and pronounced “Pristine. Clean as a whistle.” And you were cured.
Because I am a maker of poems And you are a maker of music You tell me the word pristine was perfect.
I came here, being stricken, stumbling out At last from streets; the sun, decreasing, took me For days, the time being the last of autumn, The thickets not yet stark, but quivering With tiny colors, like some brush strokes in The manner of the pointillists; small yellows Dart shaped, little reds in different pattern, Clicks and notches of color on threaded bushes,
Most like an arch—an entrance which upholds and shores the stone-crush up the air like lace. Mass made idea, and idea held in place. A lock in time. Inside half-heaven unfolds.
Most like an arch—two weaknesses that lean into a strength. Two fallings become firm. Two joined abeyances become a term naming the fact that teaches fact to mean.
[Version 1: 1921] The quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping, Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame; Above them, exultant, the peewits are sweeping: They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadness their screamings proclaim.
Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lie Low-rounded on the mournful grass they have bitten down to the quick.
For my friend, Ruth, who urges me to make an appointment for the Sacrament of Confession Concerning your letter in which you ask me to call a priest and in which you ask
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