372

He stopped where he stood, at the door of the

Sacristy, the roomward side.

The moderate chamber swung under the swinging

Lightbulb that he had lightly brushed as he turned

Doorwise. He clasped broad

Hands and bellowed inwardly that it was a damn,

Damn, damn, damn thirst to be situated so.

What fatherkind was this,

That prickled out galaxies in restless condescent?

That burbled the names all other godmatter took

In his first infant word?

That cupping his hands, and waiting for the water

There to pool, and narrowing them, watching how

The water rose in kind,

Said “hosannah canoe”?

Nothing causelesser could be.

He took the hand down out of

Its blighted circling and saw it.

There were liverspots riding on the front knuckles.

Solar lentigo.

The organ withers before the candleflame,

He thought, and all its boozy descant shudder,

And its semblance in shadow,

The livlier soul, leap, ragged rascal, out of the cage,

And set itself more serious music up. “Hold me now,

While I am lonely.”

His heavy baritone rang against the windowcasing.

371

It occurred to him, gelegentlich, to found

A system, wherein the purer

Outlay of his intuition, all trace and circuit, by

A great draughtman'sboard'sworth of schematic

Would be held,

Where the lightframe might shudder slightly

And the thought consume, at each instant he stir,

Should he wished to impress

With force upon the world his will.

Harrow, he held himself down upon it blindly ;

The ur-world split ; his eyes

Opened and he reentered his devotion.

Hot damages! He rose, head of the clutchymen.

Too great a portion of wine

Was sanctified by me le soir, he thought sillily.

He thought : I have played this role in each

Of four previous lyrics.

I find myself adrift on artistry ; this is good will

To waking but no progress man may name.

I must about my work,

Should only the good author grant fairly me to it.

But he would not, and he found himself perform

The round again and over and further and on,

That no action wear upon him

Without the Kaisergeist address him firmly to it.

Blood lies in the hands of its

Author : no unsanctioned motion on the frame.

370

Woken, he faltered in his own sense,

As at the edge of a fabric,

Plucking at a point to disturb the expanse.

Light poured in the bay, through velour drapes.

The folds converged.

What is woven can be moved, he thought :

Water, though it has no memory ;

Fire, though it joins nothing ;

Light, though we cannot know it rent.

He drew at the filament and beheld the pattern

Ruck, draw out, tatter,

As at the wind's behest.

He felt his ribs ache from the bed and he thought

That, though time and space

Coincide there for a while in stillness, though

His sleep fasten him still to indeterminacy, given

All contingence held behind,

He must allow both soon to reassume, for place

To take him back into its heart, for time to throw

Him out on its measure again.

Beyond the pane, the trees bore up their signals,

Commanding him to motion. He thought:

“Let the trees of the forest sing.”

Raunenden Beschwörer. My arborescent keepers.

He had read of fire and known its codeword. Bitter

Ghostshapes called down to ash.

Fiat lux! He hauled himself up and went to the sink.

369

Michael, child Michael, lightlimbed, darkeyed,

Creature too delicate

To endure us long. Ai! Domine, quis sustinebit?

The will fractures before such things. Holyrood.

Unchained impetus,

The subtler momentum of all such occasions.

A prince out of thy star, he thought. Bare limbs

Wove above the rectory tile,

Slate grey, capillary. Trunks dark with the rain,

Scarred by parasites. No thought worked there

That he were a Polonious.

Institutional men do not imagine themselves so.

Vagaries, rather, of the captive Geist : lion, gone

Against itself to injury,

Set about by its keepers. Bloodmane and furious.

We had been the regents of the earth, he thought.

Power of command.

Peasant's mind shrinks before freedom. Barony.

Find ourselves now in a debased state. Ah,

They would spare a shackled child for us, jadis.

Marrow for the Gespenster.

Cruel thought. He drank from the waterglass,

Rose heavily, gathered up

His coat and briefcase, went slowly to the door.

In the limpid water of the pond, orange lilies,

Winter-flowering, swayed.

Vermiculo. Darkness over the surface of the deep.

368

Life were the ascent toward one ideal,

Sisyphus' toil, broken only

In the stillness of sleep and in those moments,

Before prayer, when the mind should clear

And loose of its association ;

Life were such process, given avowal,

Given clean lacklove, word bound in trust ;

So sober a song come over

All, nothing any longer could be forced.

He thought thus, when the snow fell

And the grounds sterilised,

Walking down from the chapel where branches

Lay strewn across the path,

Costing himself though

Regions of metaphysic, led by his pluming breath

Into clarity.

Each child before their Lord kneel,

Each Lord dance within their orbis. Roundelay!

Element pass into element, cadence into cadence.

Faint music out of adjoining

Quarters. An hour passes so. The snow falls.

He waits, temperately, for the curtain to gather

Into dark heights, for the

Allappertaining to allume, and the action procede

Cathedralwise. Organwhite melody, limpid bloom.

The leaves are votive, where

Remaining : Grün in Rot in Blau in Violett in Gelb.

367

367

“Blick aufs Grüne”.

Such was his mild expression,

Queasy, seagreen. Parlous wager, Padre Piscine!

The need of adequate space for contemplation,

Burdens of praxis,

Of regulation. The white collar that binds us fast.

His entry into the ministry and his first station,

In the Preparatory School.

Moments of burdensome Angst, unter vier Augen.

Of all places for a depilated man to tread—among

Schoolchildren! The heart

Bound fast to the dying animal. Dear, dear mercy.

And there, his moist lip

At the waterglass's rand. What does it afford him,

That quiet “Blick”? It may be in the silence

Of the basement office, through the membrane

Of his broad window,

In the shade of the library, dense intimations pass :

The construction of the exact body of the Lord ;

Pale, diverse quantities ;

Proportions triplicate and further ; great diagrams

In which, perhaps, the particular implies the whole.

Basta, Vater. One lights one's

Flatus with a match and witnesses braver auroras.

One must have a mind of water

To regard the sloping lawns so.

Still, novice, we do. Or the stars recall us suddenly.