For the Wren Trapped in a Cathedral, and: The Favorite Dance of the Deaf and Blind Beggar

FOR THE WREN TRAPPED IN A CATHEDRAL / Pattiann Rogers She can never remember how she entered— What door, what invisible gate, what mistaken Passage. But in this place everyday, The day shines as a muted mosaic of impenetrable Colors, and during the black moonless nights, Every flickering star lifts smoke, drips wax. She flies, back and forth through the nave, small, Bewildered among the forest of branchless trees, Their straight stone trunks disappearing majestically Into the high arches of the seasonless stone sky. No weather here, except the predictable weather Of chant and procession; no storm, except the storm Of the watchdogs let loose inside at night. Now when she perches on the bishop's throne Her song naturally imitates the pattern Of frills and flutes found in the carvings there, The hanging fruit, profuse foliage, ripened Curves. Her trills have adapted themselves To fit perfectly the detailed abundance Of that wooden Paradise. And she has come to believe in gods, swerving close To the brightness of the apse, attempting to match Her spread wings, her attitude, to that of the shining Dove caught there in poised flight above the Ark. Near the window of the upper chapel, she imagines She is that other bird emanating golden rays To the Christ in the river below. Resting on a colonnade opposite the south wall Of stained glass, she watches how the lines Of her wings become scarlet and purple With Mary's Grief. And when she flies the entire Length of the side aisles, she passes Through the brown-orange swath of light From the Journey into Egypt, the green and azure 244 · The Missouri Review Of the Miracle of the Five Thousand Fed. Occasionally she finds that particular moment And place where she is magnificently transformed, The dull brown of her breast becoming violet And magenta with the Adoration of the Magi. What is it that happens to her body, to bone And feather and eye, when, on some dark evenings, She actually sees herself covered, bathed, suffused In the red blood of the Crucifixion? Among the statues at night, she finds it a peace, A serenity, to pause, to murmur in sleep Next to the ear of a saint, to waken Nested on the outstretched hand Of the Savior's unchanging blessing. Certainly she dreams often of escape, of reversing That process by which she came to be here, leaving As an ordinary emissary carrying her own story, Sacred news from the reality of artifice, Out into the brilliant white mystery Of the truthful world. Pattiann Rogers THE MISSOURI Review · 245 THE FAVORITE DANCE OF THE DEAF AND BLIND BEGGAR / Pattiann Rogers It contains the same precision of gesture Accomplished by the morning larkspur leaning Eastward toward light and the same rapid virtuosity Of the darting fingerling in deep-creek sun And the single turn of the many—in flocks Of ricebirds, in schools of mackerel. He understands, by his own body, the soaring Of the sunsplit leap of salmon after salmon Through loop after loop of cascading current. Without sight, without sound, still he knows The complicated coordination, the passing-by, The uniting and separating performed by the company Of willow leaves, yellow catkins and their ribbon-like Branches blowing together in an erratic wind. In the closing of his hand, he recognizes The slow folding of the dancer on stage, the same act Sealed and completed in the rolling curl Of the seahorse's tail. As if he saw and heard The phenomenon from the inside out, the pattern Of the waltzer's feet on the floor, like the design Of a woodfern reflected in a pond, he perceives In its immediate form. What grace, the way he yearns for the reverence Of a rising line of smoke, which does not descend, Which has no fall. What evocation, the motion Of the blooming hyacinth in the motion Of his beseeching. Of course, he can comprehend, without speech, The intricacies of this dance which tambourines And drums, masks, scarves, mudras, taconeo, The cabriole, the arabesque merely investigate, Elucidate in part, revealing occasionally the exact Placement and position, the circling and holding 246 · The Missouri Review That were first...