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Or so it seems.
But, see? But really see and know?
And, knowing, want to touch those fires,
To grow until the mighty brow of man Lamarckian-tall
Knocks earthquakes, striking moon,
Then Mars, then Saturn’s rings;
And, growing, hope to show
All other beasts just how
To fly with dreams instead of ancient wings.
So, think on this: we’re first! the only ones
Whom God has honored with his rise of suns.
For us as gifts Aldebaran, Centauri, homestead Mars.
Wake up, God says. Look there. Go fetch.
The stars. Oh, Lord, much thanks. The stars!
This Attic Where the Meadow Greens (#ulink_79da9c05-3083-5a65-a54a-dd2050090757)
This attic where the meadow greens
Now keeps itself a world between two worlds,
One world of weather, one of blood and dream.
Its architectural scheme there high above
Was to make heaps and sprawls of silent time
Abide it there to know a slower beat
Than any river street or dogprint lawn.
Here yawns lost yestermorn
When loss and death were yet unborn
And fear, locked in the womb, stopped up its breath
To let it whisper forth some other year.
A gardener lived here once—
My grandpapa whose notion
Was to tend and seed a rooftop sea of grass
And garret-mind it under glass—
A private lawn, each blade an hour, minute, second
Burning bright
Where boys and dogs might meet to fight, or gambol on,
And smile.
And all the while poor beasts below
In stifled traffics come and go.
So, late and drowned in night
Or striking midriff day,
The old man bent to rattletap croquet
And marched between the arching hoops
And found it clever to knock brightly colored balls
That comet-ran forever down our hidden sky.
In meadow-attic, with fanatic skill and ease
He touched to kill wrong destinies with games.
Full joys, fine aims he planned and played above the trees.
Death’s sneeze? was corked! And if dark came some future day
He would be challenged to delay awhile,
Take up croquet, seize mallet,
Stop balloting for night,
Stand bright, know day,
Whack blazing orb-sun, rolling fire,
Lose at croquet to Gramps,
The champ of champs who sent dark down and out away from town.
Toward other years and hours
When high lawn brown and sunk to seed knew weed for flowers.
The games went on till I was ten.
Death, back again, brought grimmer tools
And played Gramps by some older, stricter rules and won.
In mid-June’s bright-noon sun
The croquet stopped in full mid-scene.
We buried old man, mallets, orbs, and hoops in that high green.
That’s years ago.
We rarely visit now in attic meadows where you’d need a plow
To find his treasuring of bones
Or make a measuring of where the ancient joys
Still play themselves on air
For boys.
I only know on days like these
I hear his rushing run above the trees
Where his ghost tells me what life means
From attic where the meadow greens.
Abandon in Place (#ulink_d10fd500-2d0d-5f3d-ac4e-745dedad7766)
Three elegies written on visiting the deserted rocket pads at Cape Canaveral
1
Abandon in Place.
No Further Maintenance Authorized.
Abandon. Turn away your face.
No more the mad high wanderings of thought
You once surmised. Let be!
Wipe out the stars. Put out the skies.
What lived as center to our souls
Now dies—so what?—now dies.
What once as arrow to our thoughts
Which target-ran in blood-fast flow
No longer flies.
Cut off the stars. Slam shut the teeming skies.
Abandon in Place.
Burn out your eyes.
2
Where firebirds once
Now daubers caulk the seams;
Where firewings flew
To blueprint young men’s dreams,
Now warbler here and osprey weave their nests
From laces lost from off a spaceman’s tread.
The great hearthplace stands cold,
Its Phoenix dead.
No more from out the coals
Bright salamanders burn and gyre,
Only the bright beasts’ skins and restless bones bed here,
