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On Imageable Gods

You are penates, hearthed in my heart by habit,

well-known gentle gods

upon whom mercy sits, a small cricket singing.

You would allow me to rest now, dreaming by the fire

from which I soon shall rise, to risk

discovering an added, unknown tread

upon my inmost stair.

My other images, lined on the mantel shelf,

sit eyeless, disfaced, outgrown—

my fathers’ lares who guarded their questionings

through unfolding times as perilous as these—

but voiceless now,

their tongues used up and lapsed to stone.

Watch on, only your quicksilver flakes of eyes

still alive in flashes of the weaving fire,

your comfortable two-note song

reaching outside the window, pushing back

the still unstarred nothingness out there

and echoing dimly up the dark turret I shall explore tonight.

I fill my ears for remembering.