Sabbath Mourning
[ -- after "Sunday Morning" by Wallace Stevens]
One late morning, the sun on oranges and coffee,
A parrot independent and green:
These blend on the rug, and mix in the chair,
To wash away the age old stillness
Of solemn Holy ritual.
She dreams of darkness; her feelings trespass,
And disaster seems to wait in reflections
Of light under water.
A sweet sharp scent of orange
And those wings of brilliant green
Call to her mind
A ghostly parade marching over soundless seas.
Silent like the day -- this water so wide
Is hushed by her passing sleep-washed feet, so quiet.
She's nearing Palestine
The kingdom of loss and stillness,
Where the dead and more lie entombed.
II.
Why would she squander her treasures on ghosts?
What kind of heaven flickers
Only in the shadows of dreams?
Won't she find comforts -- in the sun,
In fragrant fruit and brilliant green wings,
Or in any natural peace or idyll --
Particulars to hold more dear than myths of Paradise ?
The glory of Heaven must live in her soul.
Rain in romance, snow falling in sensations,
Heart-breaking solitudes, or in the reckless happiness
When spring explodes,
Windblown sentiments on autumn's wet highway nights,
The treasures of all joys and miseries --
Mindful both of summer's bloom and withered winter leaves --
These are the boundaries that define her spirit.
III.
When Jehovah was born in the clouds -- unlike us --
He didn't taste mother's milk, nor inherit a blessed country
That could broaden the notions of His legendary Intellect.
Still, He walked right here beside us,
Like some mumbling president, resplendent,
Following in back with the herders,
Until Heaven mixed into our blood for the first time,
And so thoroughly quenched our thirsty needs
That the shepherds could see it coming in the starry night.
Will our unison fall disbanded,
Or will our blood sing heavenly harmonies?
And could the world become a Heaven
As good as any we can find?
That day we'll see a far friendlier sky,
Still facing struggles and sorrows,
But only one step over in sheer magnificence
From the Love that lasts forever --
Not these careless and distracting blues.
IV.
Sleepy sparrows sweetly ask of hazy morning fields
"How real are you?" as dawn breaks new through mists.
"I'm happy then" says she, "But where might Heaven live,
If, soaring off, birds left forever, and fields of sunshine disappeared?"
Still, never has an island home for choral wraiths, or southern visions,
Or promised lands, or spirits freed from open graves,
Or perfect gold-lined netherworlds,
Or even distant Heaven's palm on hills set touching tranquil clouds,
Reigned ever more certainly
Than fresh green bursts of brilliant April's life;
Nor ever lived so memorably as birds of April's daybreak,
Or lasted longer than the hope for June and welcome nightfall,
Completed in perfection by the soaring wings of every tern.
V.
"Sure, I'm happy now," she said,
"But why can't joy remain forever?"
Mother Death gives birth to beauty;
She alone can grant this wish.
Our trails lead ever toward erasure
As surely as Her leaves must fall.
She's cleared a path for sad disease,
Oblivion, and victories that ring like bronze,
Or love's soft-spoken sympathies;
She bends the willow and makes it tremble
For all young women there who rest on sunny lawns
And wait alone to watch for pleasure.
She calls young men to offer plums and pears to them,
Though gifts mask games, and girls must deign to notice.
Then tasting sweetness, Love awakens;
They wander about, tempted once again to kick the leaves.
VI.
Does death never alter the rhythm in Heaven?
Will apples not brown, nor drop from the tree?
Would fruit stay suspended, hang perfect and ripe?
Is the atmosphere changeless and pleasant forever?
How will rivers, which here rush to oceans, flow nowhere?
Why should shorelines remain undisturbed by erosion?
Why a fragrance of plums to bring scent to the seaside,
Or an orchard of pear trees to stand near a river?
It will only set rhyming familiar arrangements;
Like echoes from this world, such are obvious quotes.
Afternoons of woven silk like these
Will sound a chord on our forgetful strings.
Beauty is born of mysterious death;
Mother Death takes us in to the warmth of Her heart.
In the fire we invent our own mothers who wait,
Just like God, here on earth day and night.
VII.
Pliant and wild as a crowd,
Men form a circle at daybreak one summer
To chant and make merry.
Their rowdy worship of the sun
Won't mistake our sun for God,
But shows that God might very nearly shine like that
Unhidden at the center -- a raw primeval force.
They sing songs of Valhalla
On the beat in their blood,
And these fly home through clear morning skies.
Their refrains go out swirling, cry heaped on cry,
And timbre on timbre
To the windblown and satisfied pools of the Lord.
And His highest of angels, like oak trees, hear echoes
From hillsides still singing in harmony ever.
They'll remember as men might in joys of communion
That we'll share in creation though summers must end.
If you ask where they've come from
Or where to they'll travel
Let the dew on their feet show an answer.
VIII.
Over silent waters she hears sad words:
"This tomb is quite empty of spirits remaining
At the grave Jesus slept in near Palestine
We're at home in the ancient confusion of sunlight
Where night yoked with day turns around every season.
But in free independence this old island is lonely,
Sealed completely by waters too wide to escape.
Our mountains hold deer trails and families of quail
Who'll whistle or cry abruptly around us;
Wild berries grow sweetly untilled in the outback.
Solitude alone turns to blue evening skies,
Where covies of pigeons relax now in flight
Wandering aimlessly, moving in waves,
They sink in deep shadows,
Reach out to full span.
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