Her Voice

I.
The times with such rapidity
Shed skin for skin, the pard
Through jungle dark could not
Follow the theme of them;
I therefore like a dervish
Move in a cone and twirl,
For straightly thrown’s the stone
Cast of the gyring sling.
All things return unto their source
So they must meet me on the way.

II.
Facedown with bullet-dimpled brow
The great-eyed giant falls;
White oaks and heretofore inaudible
Communities of brooks make their applause.

III.
A shepherd barefoot in the heavy night
Hears in the hills a lonely nightingale;
And there are silver clovers on the earth
Like fallen, petaled stars.
The barbéd stem of a pale leafless rose,
Hangs at his side a sword;
And from its point a sanguine dew
Drops redly to the ground.

IV.
With black mud out of the Nile’s bank
I have built Axis Mundi in the heart.

V.
Corn stalks in a valley like spears of gold
Tremble in the wide courtyards of the moon.

VI.
Six hundred chariots have disobeyed
The throne which built them for its will.

VII.
A blue-eyed woman at her loom;
Before the dawn a lullaby
Her work accompanies;
Like leaping fawns, her fingers are nimble.
The angel of that country in a water-pail
Catches her voice,
And pours it out upon the withered land
For a spiritual Nile, whose water breathes
In light and hymnody.