eleven young italians

         i

Eleven young Italians
half bent upon their instruments

(Gabriel, Virgil, Palestrina,
Francis, St.‘s David and Joan-
Barabbas and sad Romeo
Isis, Genghis , Tintoretto even . . . )

Whose strings heaved wind and rain
across the upset violets;
changing Day to blackest Night
here beneath Orion
far down below the green, green grass.

Somewhere sang it, this I know
a little voice which sang it so:

“Snow white eyes and diamond hands
half bent in search of daffodils;
one sleepy sky engulfs the sands,
Time and all the bird calls still”

An album of some pagent (from some time)
on just such a day
become suspended,
gilt licked by a cool gold star, upended
Death
. . just like that.

        ii
The young corn widowed in its icy husk of blue
Knelt down to pray
And thus three years
Did bend his cob a grievous way

Yet that one dove grey afternoon
Weightless,
Ascending drew the air like a balloon
Up from the snow glazed field and hill
Black umber’d woods
The glycerin shade
And the thrush in the wicket

Yet all these things
In a fabled wink
Had given way to mark
Just such a path between the crops and rows
And there the orange hinges of St. David’s door.

Clouded shivers herd the thunderous April thaw
Antique and blistering
News dropped down from Paradise
Like pebbles on the straw
(and changed the Night to brightest Day)

St. David, busy at his clocks and pressing wine
Called to his flock
( . . . Were busy threshing heather of their own)

And thus the knife dropped gently in the sink
Nearby the first tomatoes of the spring
Nearby the crocus and the rowdy plover-ing.

Angels and good Catholics set thy bows
And measure for him how the gate
Swings back and forth in equal dose.

Packed to hike the field and hill
He drew the shutters, bolted down the door
Burned the timbers, razed the still
Collected every hand-cut nail and fill’d
His empty pockets with these things.

A city on this site hangs in the sun-filled air
And so to claim it
Turned his back and left this place
The moon remained
(to till those muddy rows companionless.)

Thus stripped
each fair vision and remembrance
from the sleeping stones are peeled
then creased in twenty-seven folds
(these he tucked into his heart)
A face so hazardous,
eye witnessed in the several color Polaroids
of Saints entranced, who loved their rose
yet fear the pot is built
of silver’d and familiar cameos.

        iii
Where can he place
his sad, unhappy face;
disguised from hungry angels
who have set their fiddles down
upon the holiest of ground
excited and allured by quaint skullduggery?

A pink subpoena for his dreams
And cameras for the halls and doors
(will it be said that Harry was the finest husband in the fatherland?)

Seek ye Gabriel and sweet Isis
for the answers they would give,
ask me Thursday how I measure
what a man must be to live . . .

Yet that an honest man could love
ten thousand wives within a month
is not the subject of the stars
nor in the writings of the monks.

But started off instead, the trail obscured
by dust unsettled into faint heroic shapes
behind the sloped-backed mare and to the forest edge
he made off to Cumber-land,
whereon the prairie rests inside the hollow
where the mountain gapes.

Somewhere sings it, this I know
a tender voice who sings it so:

“bring on thy fears and set your furrow’d brow
then loose your mare unto the dotted hills.
thou art now the host of every pleasant sight and sound;
for thee the cuckoo and the killdeer shrills”

        iiii
Good night Barabbas, take thee off and into bed
tell young Virgil now to change his spots,
drop his costume by the village head.
All you numbered on the warrant raise thy strings
retreat to let the weary lovers love
and clamp the honest virtues of the harp
tight beneath the soft pink arm and chin.

The tall leeks anchored in their bulbs
rise in defense outside the cottage door
(shame lies wasted and disfigured,
left to beg for mussels by the shore)

Myself, content
to stalk the deepest blue of night
unsure of how the chimney smoke will pour;
ageless in my multi-colored tent,
(who questions knows you all the more.)