Sunday, November 29, 2009

A Poem for the New Liturgical Year

Around for silent miles, the cleaned trees go in
to some listening state, as would appear
hibernation to their bud break, shade-making
prime and dispossession, flurried ember-rot.
But no: new eyes open this ashen afternoon,
stealth-hearing ears and stillness like a rock.

Each lineage of emptied stems becomes
a nest's vigil waiting, receiving from
the sky, portents that are also presences.
The ages are done and their terminus
is set within each bridge's time and length:
the end of all time has been fixed within

the center of time. Stripped is all in all,
and all-in-all's a vigilance. Darkest depth
has housed a frightful liberation whence
the spillage poison may freak and foment,
may drive up to the very heaven's stars to shake;
and while it happens, deemed to overtake,

creature man will have free, terrible space
in which to lift towards his birth his face.

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