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From the dead lying everywhere Unchanged. That was farewell, And I imagine now two things that touch the top Ofmy head with thought, unexpected as lightning Out ofleaves. One is that the yard is Choked with trees, and that I would smother On chlorophyll before I could Knee-walk to the house. The other is that This lawn is still crawlable, and that a simple Shoot I found with a split ofgreen And one pigtail ofa root I was lucky Enough to hold in my hand and put back To clutch again the essential ofearth Where it was meant to be held, Took hold, that it now would hold Me, that I still could achieve it, still rise. TheAngeloftheMaze 1. THE MAZE At mid-morning her wheel-chair seems to rock Softly, plaited and varnished, free Ofthe light held thick with clearness Under the sill. The lawn ofivy rustles. As he sits and reads, hand on wicker table, Light passing over his wrist and sleeve And fingers composedly trembling As ifraised, not sure, nor yet in appeal From an animal partially withdrawn, Ivy moving together in one heaped, gently Flaking sound, an angel comes to pay Him for his wife. He knows with what Inflections the spirit relievedly smiles Through the braced shuttle ofthe blind Hung with its side-faced and deepening coin. He feels his palm glance into the small Cambricked light, and the other burns off, Not seen, past the window: the stripes turn The Angel ofthe Maze / 3I For one closed furious shock ofsun, black, Or solid light, and behind them something runs, Pattering rapidly over the ivy leaves, Then stands. He takes his cap and cane And goes out the bright door, down The three stairs into the garden, For a moment looking up at the house Like a cliff, forty years old, white, The back as pretty as the front. In the summerhouse mired in roses He pins a rose-leafwith his cane, And hears the intricate circle glide Form within form toward perfect Silence, order, place, and sun. Here, he imagines the statue ofa boy, Or a girl, it is sexless with youth, On a pedestal: just the warm head And unfinished shoulders. Leaves, The small-squared light, shower it With motion, and lay the shadows Bare against the hesitant sweet mouth. He wraps his fingers on the cane, shifts, And tries to think. Beside, before His trying, inside the hedges, the green Lattice-work, on gravel, the head stands, A cloud breathed dazzling about its unknown Rain, conceived like thirst, not moving, Never giving up, fiercer, more perfectUnchanged . Toward the slender lips, his voice Brims like a harp, and is still. Day after day, the edges ofthe mouth Hold more, to keep the smile the same, As though the sculptor, having placed a hand In the clean spring ofhis childhood, With the other flowered stone to dream His mother's face. It is healed forever Into shadows: it need not speak, It need not lift into noon, nor to his face: Summons / 32 He has nothing but to believe In the silver light coming through it, And out ofthe harmless wild ofthe eyes Altering, and altering back So fast there is no change, and he must run Still and deep to his gaze as stone To make the bright rooms stop Upon him here, their flowers close Him down among the cut paths ofthe sun. At night each leafofivy trembles As though it grew sharply, lightly, Over a mouth. All night, upstairs, He thinks ofwandering, lifting his hand Upon his chest, feeling it solidly Hold him there, as he turns in the leaves And corners ofthe paths ofthe centerless Garden. Subtly the hedges are changed Out ofa mind exhaustlessJ clea1j struck whole Into its opengazeprefigured deviously In crossing wheels and limits ofthe sight Through fireJ inforestsgrown amazed and mild About recurrentpassage. The ivy scatters, Bending to moon-white, as a low wind breasts. Scott? Falcon? Falcon Scott? Such cold To hover tracklessJ for milesJ he did not wishHe came again upon his dead soul, Leaning forward out ofthe air Ofthe circle, touches him, and the circle parts To his lifted hand at the same place, But the place itselfis changed Over with suns through different, more Radiant brush, perfect, beginning again, Marvelling painlesslyfor a moment He is confused by a stone figure Ofhis mother's: a boy with a straw Marble hat. He grins into the dark Like an old young man, and...

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