This day, too, is a poem.

This day, too, is a poem
(after Jeffers)

The messiah lay on her back under a whirligig rain,
samaras spinning out from the great maple.
Anemochory stammer,
closer than Danzig, 
less hawk-cry
than paperthin pennon, 
dark seed bound to its own image,
whistling its way down.

The messiah closed her eyes and let the receiver drift.

I am close, whistling among the ruins, feeling
the nettlesting of a palpable coming end, wishing 
on some star after seed of devotion
while she, oldest of muezzins, begins to sing 
calling me to bring my graft to root
promising amulets dangling by horsehair from limb.

I close my eyes beneath that hand-crafted sky
and watch the spinning state elsewhere falling 
toward a fetid ground it cannot abide 
as innumerable hands meet columns  
palms flattening to press.

Wingspan near, in the dark between the trees
a woodthrush unlocks a door.
Dressed in harpsichord morphemes
something beyond this blue
pronounces a breachpoint.

The messiah and I, hand in hand 
settle into the reindeer moss beneath us
to await the day and the company
of whatever world was coming next.



This a revision based on some thoughts following on Dougald Hine’s invoking of Campanga and worlds ending specifically in this podcast here and in general at his substack here.

Image is Chagall’s Adam and Eve Expelled from Paradise