THE WINDOWS OF BREATH
A rending brightness from the brandished arc
Bursting out of clouds of rain
On the strange waters lifting that frail ark
Through beat of wing and leaf
To the last summit of
all
memories lost
By the awakening brain,
Touching the slippers, chair, the stockinged post,
Clock's glass, the whirling mote, the falling grain,
Then last,
Faint lids with darkness overcast
Of moving rainbows, moving out of dark
Into a world of light half-closed
Where half-closed lashes sought a deathless ghost.
There the white breath of day dissolved those flames
Whose rich auroras grew but could not cross,
And sunbeams danced on our remembered names
Cold .as clear streams and softer than green moss.
Waking from peace,
First from a shell with all the lights of chance
Out of the coil of whirling waters spun
Miraculous foam and fleece
To lie in the sun,
Its film of sound undone .
By the stretched waterfilm that held the first
World of light until it burst
And rolled on darkness as a child may run;
Next from the wounded one,
Stain of birth and radiance,
Out of rough earth, the seed's inheritance,
Out of the ritual dance
Of winds and seasons, rise of sun and moon,
A dedicated, perfect thing
Opening to the common crime,
Summons of the maiming Spring,
Canker of Winter and deforming time,
Compounded with dark earth and cloyed
To exult and be destroyed,
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