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(Any dawn now), awaken In church, not on the coffin boards Of a back pew, or on furnace-room rags, But on the steps ofthe altar Where candles are opening their eyes With all-seeing light And the green stained glass ofthe windows Falls on them like sanctified leaves. Who else has quite the same Commitment to not being sure What he shall behold, come from sleepA child, a policeman, an effigy? Who else has died and thus risen? Never knowing how they have got there, They might just as well have walked On water, through walls, out ofgraves, Through potter's fields and through barns, Through slums where their stony pillows Refused to harden, because of Their hope for this morning's first light, With water moving over their legs More like living cover than it is. Goodbye to Serpents Through rain falling on us no faster Than it runs down the wall we go through, My son and I shed Paris like a skin And slip into a cage to say goodbye. Through a hole in the wall ofthe Jardin des Plantes We come to go round The animals for the last time; Tomorrow we set out for home. For some reason it is the snakes To which we seem to owe Goodbye to Serpents / I73 The longest farewell ofour lives. These have no bars, but drift On an island held still by a moat, Unobstructedly gazing out. My son will not move from watching Them through the dust ofcold water, And neither will I, when I realize That this is my farewell To Europe also. I begin to look More intently than I ever have. In the moat one is easily swimming Like the essence ofswimming itself, Pure line and confident curve Requiring no arms or legs. In a tree, a bush, there is one Whose body is living there motionless, Emotionless, with drops running down, His slack tail holding a small Growing gem that will not fall. I can see one's eyes in the brush, As fixed as a portrait's, Gazing into, discovering, forgetting The heart ofall rainfall and sorrow. He licks at the air, Tasting the carded water Changed by the leaves ofhis home. The rain stops in midair before him Mesmerized as a birdA harmony ofdrops in which I see Towers and churches, domes, Capitals, streets like the shining Paths ofthe Jardin des Plantes, All old, all cold with my gaze In glittering, unearthly fascination. I say, "Yes! So I have seen them! But I have brought also the human, The presence ofselfand oflove." Yet it is not so. My son shifts Helmets / I 74 Uneasily back and away, bored now, A tourist to the bitter end, And I know I have not been moved Enough by the things I have moved through, And I have seen what I have seen Unchanged, hypnotized, and perceptive: The jewelled branches, The chandeliers, the windows Made for looking through only when weeping, The continent hazy with grief, The water in the air without support Sustained in the serpent's eye. In the ChildJsNight On distant sides ofthe bed We lie together in the winter house Trying to go away. Something thinks, "You must be made for it, And tune your quiet body like a fish To the stars ofthe Milky Way To pass into the star-sea, into sleep, By means ofthe heart ofthe current, The holy secret offlowing." Yet levels ofdepth are wrestling And rising from us; we are still. The quilt pattern-a child's pink whaleHas surfaced through ice at midnight And now is dancing upon The dead cold and middle ofthe air On my son's feet: His short legs are trampling the bedclothes Into the darkness above us Where the chill ofconsciousness broods Like a thing ofabsolute evil. I rise to do freezing battle In the Child's Night / I75 ...

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