For lack of an image
the island
invents old vicar voices
to call out echoes sounding
down the ages
making the small sermon of itself
as a rock
in the blue centre
of these mountains...and so I think we'll wear away as well
to one sad geological sorrow—
and so I think of how
Manhatten under fifty miles of ice
arises
from the tiny threnody
of all erosion
melted to a single strand of candle grief
like a whisp
of grass, the second Beatle singer's
silenced in a field of song
that thronged
among us
among these thousands—
and so I say
"he who plucks the poet's beard
shall feel his pain
and meaning
green the hand that grooms his grave."
composed in memory of George
Harrison and John Donne |
