Emmaus

It is the first Sunday of the Gospel of Luke.
I laughed before the morning was full born.
If stars were like sliced apples and were born
Like apple-trees then one might wonder how
Sounds look to angel-eyes. The night is worn
Like a black helmet, chased with silver lines
By a widower king that mourns
The pale-lipped nymph he married in his youth.
One should not laugh until he is full wise;
Laughter’s a draught that only a god’s throat
Can be not burnéd by. Sounds look to angel-eyes
As stones that corkscrew downwards in a pool
Look to a fish. Lao Tzu taught me to laugh,
But only when the sunlight slaps the pool
Into a clear reflection of myself. I offer soup
To all that knock upon my door; God knows
What knuckles will be in the Eschaton,
Or what my door. I doff my helmet by the pool,
Until I realize it for a grail;
Then scooping up the sunny water, I imbibe
Tears my grandfather wept. They do not taste of salt.
Whatever was his sorrow, it was sweet.
I toss an apple core into the pool, and it is caught
By a pale-lipped lady, and we exchange a smile;
Behind the hedges on the common road I hear
The slow, lugubrious sound of an Ox.
Two men ride it bareback:
They introduce themselves as Lao Tzu and as Luke.
I offer each of them in turn a cup of soup,
And both refuse;
They ask for my black helmet as a cup.
One wonders how an angel swims through light,
Wings for his fins, his intellect for gills,
And apple-seeds for ideated worlds.
The house of Philemon was built
By cynocephali, and yet
In it angels have dwelt.
We are seven miles from Jerusalem
As the crow flies; we shake the dust off of our feet.
Merlin the Synesthete
Doffs the black helmet of the night.
Son of an incubus, he does not laugh,
But it is said that he can change his shape
And sometimes goes about in the form of an Ox.