113

Mariners and Makers

Oh let the stars still shine

while we build pointless weathervanes to probe out

Venus or Mars: lava, hard rock, unlivable.

Even if it is only play, this dancing play between

unimageable concept and concrete analogues

(the lightning stroke invisible in flesh-thick clouds

versus the heard guitar, caught by transistors and rheostats)

then the myth that is man’s soul must stretch

wonderful distances to join harmonic to harmonic,

materiality to unmattered dream.

Let the stars shine on.

We suffer an imperishable need

to live in beauty.

A jongleur stood before the high throne of Charlemagne

(or was it Pericles? or the sainted Louis?)

and tossed silver balls to ripple in candlelight

like bright waterfalls and leaf-twiddle under rain

and the play of candled eyes

that watched that play, entranced.

The whole court sighed one sigh as he caught

the last glancing ball

and bedded them from sight in his jongleur pack.

But grey courtiers left with a young lilt in their step

and the brave-hipped women flowed lightly from that hall,

and Charlemagne, bending from his gilt throne, said:

Young sir, abide, and I shall pay you well.

But jongleurs must travel through time, having always stars

to fling up the unfilled sky.

And this it was he came again today

to stand before a tracking console and watch

equations rise on rockets

beyond the reach of the physical eye—

concept cast into outer space to fish in further concept,

and each one wearing the look of bodied things.

And thus from that bright play of hydrogen and steel

again he will walk forth under the mysterious stars

to image some next unimageable knowing.

Oh undying jongleur of bright balls that lift and fall,

into immaterial air toss your endless analogues,

each to glance its premonitory play

of seeing into the night.

Let the stars still shine.