winds
(for Alexis Leger)

　Deep,deep below our violences,
Quite still,lie our First Dad , his watch
　And many little maids,
But the boneless winds that blow
　Round law-court and temple
Recall to Metropolis
　That Pliocene friday when,
At His holy insufflation
　(Had he picked a teleost
Or an arthropod to inspire,
　Would our death also have come?)
One bubble-brained creature said--
　''I am loved,therefore i am''--:
And well by now might the lion
　Be lying down with the kid,
Had he stuck to that logic.

　Winds make wearther;weather
Is what nasty people are
　Nasty about and the nice
Show a common joy in observing:
　When I seek an image
For our Authentic City
　(Across what brigs of dread,
Down what gloomy galleries,
　Must we stagger or crawl
Before we may cry--O look!?),
　I see old man in hall-ways
Tapping their barometers,
　Or a lawn over which
The first thing after breakfast,
　A paterfamilias
Hurries to inspect his rain-gauge.

Goddess of winds and wisdom,
　When,on some windless day
Of dejection,unnable
　To name or to structure,
Your poet with bodily tics,
　Scratching,tapping his teeth,
Tugging the lobe of an ear,
　Unconsciously invokes You,
Show Your good nature,allow
　Rooster or whistling maid
To fetch him Arthur O''Bower;
　Then,if moon-faced Nonsence,
that erudite forger,stalk
　Through the seven kingdoms,
Set Your poplars a-shiver
　To warn Your clerk lest he
Die like an old Believer
　For some spurious reading:
And in all winds,no matter
　Which of Your twelve he may hear,
Equinox gales at midnight
　Howling through marram grass,
Or a faint susurration
　Of pines on a cloudless
Afternoon in midsummer,
　Let him feel You present,
That every verbal rite
　May be fittingly done,
And done in anamnesis
　Of what is excellent
Yet a visible creature,
　Earth,Sky,a few dear names.

September 1953