57

Remembering Statius

I have reached this pinnacle of earth

by a subtle stairway that masks itself

as passing mysteries of time.

But I shall not descend it lightly.

Oh no.

Measuring each trifling tread behind,

I mark small treasures

touched by sunlight that still remembers Eden:

like the bright lie behind the upright wheat

bravely, blindly flaunting its one little season,

mindless of the shifting stars

(oh spurious metaphor from Eleusis!)

and more lovely, for that, than pretended immortality;

or like the comfortable cricket in the ear

who keeps on singing when the world falls silent

and people gape only mute puffs of sour complaints

into a faded, fading room;

or like the windows that are eyes, everywhere,

that cannot lie, but gaze naked on all things,

vulnerable only to their own truth:

fawn’s eyes, and children’s, and the wily old crone’s

perched, half vulture, on her cart

at the corner of Eighth and Main

who gave me a penny medal of St. Christopher

fished from the murky cache in her bosom

(amid a dense cloud that extinguished

the fragrance of spring violats

I had just haggled from her)

and she said, All journeys are dangerous.

Only metaphors, these,

trifling images enshrined upon a stair

and a perpetual viaticum.