68

In the Miserific Emergency

In the bleak of the terrible year, when I look

into my garden and can see there

only a whirlpool of dark nothingness lurking

under the hypocrisy of green growth

and, dismayed, cannot shut out

the black sky behind the noonday sun

and the mockery of the untraveled stars,

I invoke your image,

draw its cool, reflective face veil-like

across the blinding deceit of sun,

and wrestle to hold it there.

Your eyes, half lidded in long thought,

focus through me distantly, abstracting

the paradox of night and light

that I cannot feel

who know it perfectly.

And you, holding yourself at peace

beside the royal gate you guard,

why pretend feeling bound by my pain or yours

in such solemnity?

Archons may twinkle as do the stars.