from the hole in St. Paul's

She was as blind as sir John Milton,
St. Paul's democrat.
who wrote his ten books
six feet high in a robe,
sickly in dim candlelight;
a Texas anthill reckoning
of peach blossoms and of hemlock.
Defending summertime with
sweet speeches memorized in my youth
outside some baritone and rheumatoid cathedral,
down below the tall stained ever-glass of windows
and grim Latin chapel doors
to the bubbling water;
a masquerade in four/four time.

I came to a fountain with her bag of stuff which we gathered from the floor
of hell.
I came to sell the curious necklaces, arrowheads and diamond rings,
all pretty as shells

I offered these,
To the priest who waved quotations from a gold bound book
To the pious deacon and his borrowed leper-look
I showed them to a salesman who explained the tithe,
I made exception to a young groom and his reckless bride.
I took them to the alter where a silent nun
flashed her rosary in the crypt-dim sun
and was drove away.

An afternoon passed two nights ago
a Capricorn in torn knit sweater hat and gloves
changed bread bags from her ankled feet on the wide staircase
outside St.Paul's,
rings of blue-black pigeons
in the rain;
Who eyed the small shoe lying by the flower stand
remembering.

Who took grim Milton to the sidewalk
centuries ago
beyond the pearled-ear frocked custodians
of the sublime,
beyond the reach of human ritual and hearing;
and so advised him,
"bear the bleak infirmary and darkness of your cell
in the manner of that Great Greek"'

and on the syllable his tongue wove rhymes
taking notice of a lithe, framed portrait of her photogenic youth
of her peach blossoms, Mata Harri pantomimes
of the hideous truth.

Who dressed in necklaces and diamond rings
from the old familiar floor of hell,
exchanged all these for his own last copy of the Paradise.
A thumb-worn coin
dropped down into a pool below some dolphin spitting;
there Poseidon, his trident staff would overrule,
sat obtuse,
and stared from dead white granite eyes
out over this city.

Down below the blue-green copper copula and bells
was a young girl who has wet her toes
in the cool medicine rain.