To a Shade in Thermopylae i.m. S.H., and: Road with Pollard Willows, and: Hesiod Maybe

TO A SHADE IN THERMOPYLAE i.m. S.H.

The longed-for music of your last workrises through wood, pale and swift downthe avenues cinders flare towards the true

north of your irises. Outbreak of troopsin the epic muslin of dawn. Dark extinction.Meanwhile, God outpaces the supposition

of your death; Spanish rock entrances mebeyond any proof you remain as the finalline to be read spring, when live coals iron

the water and the water lifts to Thermopylae,there a sun-struck boy forgets his pains,splintering all you have assailed by breath.

ROAD WITH POLLARD WILLOWS

His cricketer’s stride across the flagstonesof the library, shirt flame ruffling sunlight,off to see the Van Gogh prints in the rancidbasement. He showed me once in the dark.Talked nonstop, tracing their charcoal lines.Above our heads, footsteps and chairs, micebred in the shadows the dead circulated,and I wondered why I went. I understoodafter a clear mark spattered a self-portrait,sweat, but when I looked from Vincent’s severedstare to his face, tears seamed it into a mask.I turned away. Fifteen years ago, an instantnow, yesterday, he strikes out again towardsthe stock as I cut through the volume I stole,to another path, to give to him, the pagetorn that he had wiped gently, rattling onabout the beautiful, the really beautiful“Road with Pollard Willows”; the avertedbrother passing brother, not quite withoutsight as without pity one endless afternoon.

HESIOD MAYBE

Those living hands crossed behind his backas he prospected the river, held a book, strong heatfrom a truck burning and forest animals singingthe outlandish language he spoke when he pirouetted

to this spot, leaves and people turned in his radius,then glimpsed away, too high the scales his cometshrieked into the river where darkness from the fireof bats radiated and blanched the bow wave of the sun

in its third cycle he stared into and rock and tick,but not the hands, his book flopped towards another,the beloved honeyed into stone, lines that blossomedin his ears, feral Apollo, the burnt ocean liner soulrapt beyond all singable law, floated above ground.