DARK AGES
(For myfather, George Williamson, 1898-1968)
When I think of you I think
of the outmoded ages: the Iron Crown
of the Lombards; processions and
bells; the slow and exact punishments,
the barbarous, tearful reunions;
and especially
what Huizinga mentions, the absolute
separation of day from night.
It
is not just that I stood
before the turnstile in Duke Humphrey's library,
and saw the cloudy, waxy leather rise
to the heraldic rooftree,
your heaven, gained
by your shy illuminator's awe, that I
stand outside, barred
by the cruder presumptions that have made me, me.
As from before a great fire
your face emerges, dancing
in its old shame,
driving your Aunt Amanda
to church behind the thousand-farting drayhorse;
red, bulbous, elf-light, Swedish,
the rawest
and finest face I have yet seen on this earth,
Mr. Peanut and the old dill pickle,
and little Eheu,
and "Think, think, thou wast made in a sink"
as you scurried, half-naked, into the warm kitchen ...
Oncefor a looker and all must agree
IfI bashes the looking glass so I'll go free
