Vernon Watkins
THE WINDOWS OF BREATH
Shine out
Where dawn breaks in the hand,
Windows where thought
Piercing and writing like a diamond
Traced the first sea, the unconsidered sand:
Windows where grief
Touched the white fold, when light's first characters
Narrowing at dawn a lifetime's distances
To the cool pillow's cheek
And impulse of belief,
Discarding constant blood-knit presences
Parted in light oblique,
Stole the black silks
o.f
camphored elegy
And white mortality,
The lamp-shroud, falling cloth, the taper's hood:
Windows where good
Sprang to chill dust, veiled light and visionary,
Formed the foretelling tears
I hear and see.
What white hands laid an echo on our ears
Of ghostly burials in the years to be?
There, past the sighing shutters, first they filed,
Those men of history with iron spades;
Then, suddenly to terror reconciled,
The pigeons perched upon the gargoyles' heads.
A rainbow's sheaf
Shone, then was gone, was gone, then shone again,
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