A Good Life

I have a picture in my head of a good life.
An old man with a glad and rolling eye
Like oceans which when storming call
Bright lightning through the opaline,
But when irenic are a quiet big-winged bird
Whose shadow hides the slow pink growth of pearls.
Around his knees and on them tumbling lambs
Of Adam; little girls and boys who shall not die
Where God has hidden them. He spends all day
In normal labour, under trees and in the grass,
Sometimes with Helios himself in dialogue.
He drinks good coffee, loves his wife,
And does good deeds in secret, though it cost.
Of evening, when he has the time,
He sits down with his pen at an inherited
Thick desk, and makes his lungs a bellows, tongue
A hammer, and his soul a forge.
He writes small poems that in their heft
Outweigh the ancient slaughtered hecatombs,
And give bright nectar to the angels for them sip.
He does this as a man might rub his eyes
Trying to draw the sleep away from them.
And then to prayers, and then to bed,
For on the morrow there are places he must find
To pour the last green waters of his soul away.