In the Morning
And in memory of the pale and sleepless dead
I break my stale unconsecrated bread.
While young priests rise in the dark
dream about their celibate bodies,
descend the patient stairs to sacrifice
The host – to drink the wine -
Speaking the language of ancient
dreams to old women in black shawls,
I stir with the very whisper of the wind,
I rise and bathe the eyes that have not slept.
It is the same, is it not
as in those long days when saints
had got their act together –
sharpened swords, polished halos
softened leather for shoes
and saddles for their steeds or
mounts and “slouched” (as Yeats
said later) toward that smallest space
that little place of the first coming?
That strange dog not kneeling by
but in the manger, and canis major
leading those bright other Magi
Into the serious sirius quest
arising with its master Sun burning
in the morning
Infidels, apostles jostling on the
broad road’s shoulder emboldened by
a sharper sword or a better view:
The vision of the grail.
How beautiful the morning when the
stars all sang together
As for permutations
Among all nations
Kenya’s runners
Have the longest sinecure
Adaptation makes sense
It is the bow we make
to consequence
my artifictial knees
Are not the bee’s
but they’re not subject to the weather
And sometimes I can almost hear
the memory of morning stars
who sang together