After Visiting Frost Place

In memory of Donald Sheehan

I.

I visited your house today
In beautiful Franconia,
And wore my Californian boots,
Stitched with a gothic cross
In morning indigo,
Poor choice because the ice
Knowing your preferred eschaton
Stays glazed upon the grass
Though all the stag herds of the sun
Are visible as vapours from a creek
That has begun to thaw,
Eating bright apples from your palm.
One feels you here, your voice
Like tree-sap in the green walls of a house,
And me, a young American,
I wonder if our country has a Muse,
And if your house was also hers.
Nevertheless I could not hear your voice
Upon the other coast,
So the white-picket fence
Must have a strong demarking post.

II.

Like huge white angels broken from the earth
Stand round your house the mountains in a ring,
And there are rocking chairs upon your porch,
Whose rocking taught your iambs into sleep.
It is a good place here to be, and far
Enough from the great dens to breed
That silence which can thus receive the seed
Pressed in the azure soil of the mind
Which made your tongue to lick the walls
Of silver bells which hang on every shelf,
And brought the sapling into brilliance,
Dry brilliance, and shook the apples down.

III.

It’s likely I’ll go back,
But send your blessing on my back
When I return. Your austere psalm
Could use a touch of wildness.
I thank your household gods,
The apple-spirit and the girl birch-wood,
For this our visit here.
And let me say I also make a prayer
On his behalf, that, after you were sown,
Was of my creed the first
To crave in the God-deep
An American psalm.