No More Learning

XV

Night lies beside me
Chaste and cold as a sharp sword.
It and I alone.


XVI

Last night it rained.
Now, in the desolate dawn,
Crying of blue jays.


XVII

Foolish so to grieve,
Autumn has its colored leaves--
But before they turn?


XVIII

Afterwards I think:
Poppies bloom when it thunders.
Is this not enough?


XIX

Love is a game--yes?
I think it is a drowning:
Black willows and stars.


XX

When the aster fades
The creeper flaunts in crimson.
Always another!


XXI

Turning from the page,
Blind with a night of labor,
I hear morning crows.


XXII

A cloud of lilies,
Or else you walk before me.
Who could see clearly?


XXIII

Sweet smell of wet flowers
Over an evening garden.
Your portrait, perhaps?


XXIV

Staying in my room,
I thought of the new Spring leaves.
That day was happy.




THE SWANS


The swans float and float
Along the moat
Around the Bishop's garden,
And the white clouds push
Across a blue sky
With edges that seem to draw in and harden.

Two slim men of white bronze
Beat each with a hammer on the end of a rod
The hours of God.
Striking a bell,
They do it well.
And the echoes jump, and tinkle, and swell
In the Cathedral's carved stone polygons.

The swans float
About the moat,
And another swan sits still in the air
Above the old inn.
He gazes into the street
And swims the cold and the heat,
He has always been there,
At least so say the cobbles in the square.
They listen to the beat
Of the hammered bell,
And think of the feet
Which beat upon their tops;
But what they think they do not tell.

And the swans who float
Up and down the moat
Gobble the bread the Bishop feeds them.
The slim bronze men beat the hour again,
But only the gargoyles up in the hard blue air heed them.

When the Bishop says a prayer,
And the choir sing "Amen,"
The hammers break in on them there:
Clang! Clang! Beware! Beware!