THE WINDOWS OF BREATH
From nerveless rock wrenching the blood's bright way,
The luminous involutions of the fall,
Commingling mortal with immortal day,
Tracked with beasts' ways, the birds' grave ritual.
Shine, windows, shine, a moment has made plain
Truths that were hidden and, if thought, seemed vain:
What ages long
In sockets of old caves
Rocks in their ignorance watched the unlit fall
Of icy waves
Build the stalactite graves
Dropping to annul
The white light in a mildewed funeral,
Five colors, and the harp of muted song.
Out of the spectrum's
thrill,
Dome of the skull,
Spring from the fingers, white
Created light
From a transfiguring moment beautiful
Teaches the Past new history; seeds were yet
Unquickened, grains had no direction
Floating for minds to notice or forget
In the winds' circumspection.
Dumb, cavernous mouths, the glacier's blunted tongue
Held silence; then slow figures on a frieze
·
Saw, through glazed, shuddering colors, lit, made young,
Suddenly life take up the ringing seas.
From grip deathstrong
Whorled life uncoils, ascending like a flower,
Climbs from dark music to the stonecropped land,
Climbs from stilled music to the prisoner's tower
And diamond sorrow scrawled by frost's mailed hand.
Out of night's dumb looms where the blind Shades keep
Their crooked shuttles whence all patterns run,
Out of death's fold and shade, the coil of sleep,
Breath flies, and love's born hands surround the sun.
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