Vernon Watkins
LLEWELYN'S CHARIOT
Sun of all suns, seed of dandelion seeds,
Sprung from the stem of delight and the starry course,
High at the helm of night, in the van of deeds,
A one-wheeled carriage you drive and a headless horse.
Your Maker makes you his glory, you grasp and push
Through bars the bugle, the mirror, the string of beads,
The doll and the wooden men; with a mighty wish
You ride the brunt of creation's galloping beds.
What golden fleece enshrines at the very prow
Your marveling head, and summons from ancient seas
Sailors toiling, under the black sea-crow,
What ever-moving, miraculous, wind-faint fleece;
But you kick those puppets, those men of deeds, through the bars,
The tossed men lost, the lost men under the ark,
Seed of spray's seed, swept from the flight of the stars
To a point of light in your look that is almost dark.
Rameses, trumpet and chariot, all you outrun
Grasping your cage where grief is banished for good,
Created nothing, timeless, perpetual one
Dropped from light-years to crawl under legs of wood,
Star-seed, breath-downed, dropped from the topmost sun
To the toppling house near the shed that shadows a hearse,
From whirling, luminous night, to sleep here alone
In the darkness a great light leaves, where a feather stirs.
And I, your listener, stopped on the stairway of breath,
Awake, in the stranger's bed, in the cold, high room,
Calling the sea from Leviathan hollows of earth,
I watch them, castaway toys, while you drive and boom
