61

Where Sometimes Swallows Fly

Where dance the daughters of the credulous feast

there did I dance, shearing my grape-grown hair—

sweetness for the bier of a long-dead king—

and on the threshing-floor I too would fling

his golden effigy, let disappear

each avatar where the dance always has ceased

while the faceless tars ignore breath

and the fact of death.

She stood there in the center: no Demeter

but grey-eyed, aegis-bearing, stern and tall

as are gods who deign govern the human chance.

She beckoned. Unwilling, my feet turned from the dance

to her imperious hand, doubting the call

away from those driven bodies to one less clear.

And the faceless stars ignored breath

and the fact of death.

It is a timeless sky where only a willful door

shades out the sun. Sometimes swallows fly

to believable music; sometimes there beats a drum

under such silence the mind fails, stricken numb,

or lifts into intricately laced reply.

Athena, who could refuse your harvest-floor?

Let the faceless stars ignore breath

or a fact like death.