While, on the wolds that begirdled it, wild old men Hunted with spades and hammers, monomaniac each, For a megalith or a fossil, And bird-watchers stalked the mossy beech-woods.
Suddenly, over the lawn we started to run For, 1o, through the trees in a cream and golden coach Drawn by two baby locomotives, The god of mortal doting approached us,
Flanked by his bodyguard, those hairy armigers in green Who laugh at thunderstorms and weep at a blue sky: He thanked us for our cheers of homage, And promised X and Y a passion undying.
i
With a wave of his torch he commanded a dance; So round in a ring we flew, my dear on my right, When I awoke. But fortunate seemed that Day because of my dream and enlightened,
And dearer, water, than ever your voice, as if Glad—though goodness knows why—to run with
the human race, Wishing, I thought, the least of men their Figures of splendor, their holy places.
7 July 1953
75
Horae Canonicae
"Immolatus vicerit"
I Prime
Simultaneously, as soundlessly,
Spontaneously, suddenly As, at the vaunt of the dawn, the kind
Gates of the body fly open To its world beyond, the gates of the mind,
The horn gate and the ivory gate, Swing to, swing shut, instantaneously Quell the nocturnal rummage
Of its rebellious fronde, ill-favored,
Ill-natured and second-rate, Disenfranchised. widowed and orphaned
By an historical mistake: Recalled from the shades to be a seeing being,
From absence to be on display, Without a name or history I wake Between my body and the day.
Holy this moment, wholly in the right,
As, in complete obedience To the light's laconic outcry, next
As a sheet, near as a wall, Out there as a mountain's poise of stone,
The world is present, about, And I know that I am, here, not alone
But with a world, and rejoice Unvexed, for the will has still to claim
This adjacent arm as my own, The memory to name me, resume Its routine of praise and blame, And smiling to me is this instant while
Still the day is intact, and I The Adam sinless in our beginning, Adam still previous to any act.
I draw breath; that is of course to wish
No matter what, to be wise, To be different, to die and the cost,
No matter how, is Paradise Lost of course and myself owing a death:
The eager ridge, the steady sea, The flat roofs of the fishing village
Still asleep in its bunny, Though as fresh and sunny still, are not friends
But things to hand, this ready flesh No honest equalbut my accomplice now, My assassin to be, and my name
Stands for my historical share of care
For a lying self-made city, Afraid of our living task, the dying Which the coming day will ask.
1949
II Terce
After shaking paws with his dog (Whose bark would tell the world that he is always kind),
The hangman sets off briskly over the heath; He does not know yet who will be provided To do the high works of Justice with: Gently closing the door of his wife's bedroom
(Today she has one of her headaches), With a sigh the judge descends his marble stair; „
He does not know by what sentence He will apply on earth the Law that rules the stars:
And the poet, taking a breather Round his garden before starting his eclogue,
Does not know whose Truth he will tell. f
Sprites of hearth and store-room, godlings f
Of professional mysteries, the Big Ones
Who can annihilate a city, Cannot be bothered with this moment: we are left,
Each to his secret cult, now each of us Prays to an image of his image of himself:
"Let me get through this coming day g
Without a dressing down from a superior, ^
Being worsted in a repartee, Or behaving like an ass in front of the girls; I
Let something exciting happen, 1
Let me find a lucky coin on a sidewalk, I
Let me hear a new funny story." 4
At this hour we all might be anyone: It is only our victim who is without a wish,
Who knows already (that is what We can never forgive. If he knows the answers,
Then why are we here, why is there even dust?), Knows already that, in fact, our prayers are heard,
That not one of us will slip up, That the machinery of our world will function
Without a hitch, that today, for once, There will be no squabbling on Mount Olympus,
No Chthonian mutters of unrest, But no other miracle, knows that by sundown We shall have had a good Friday.
October 1953
III Sext 1
You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation,
you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon
making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading,
wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function.
How beautiful it is,
that eye-on-the-object look.
To ignore the appetitive goddesses, to desert the formidable shrines
of Rhea, Aphrodite, Demeter, Diana, to pray instead to St. Phocas,
St. Barbara, San Saturnino,
or whoever one's patron is, j
that one may be worthy of their mystery, what a prodigious step to have taken.
There should be monuments, there should be odes, to the nameless heroes who took it first,
to the first flaker of flints who forgot his dinner,
the first collector of sea-shells to remain celibate.
Where should we be but for them? Feral still, un-housetrained, still
wandering through forests without a consonant to our names,
slaves of Dame Kind, lacking all notion of a city
and, at this noon, for this death, there would be no agents.
2
You need not hear what orders he is giving to know if someone has authority,
you have only to watch his mouth: when a besieging general sees
a city wallbreached by his troops, when a bacteriologist
realizes in a flash what was wrong with his hypothesis, when,
from a glance at the jury, the prosecutor knows the defendant willhang,
their lips and the lines around them relax, assuming an expression,
not of simple pleasure at getting their own sweet way but of satisfaction
at being right, an incarnation of Fortitudo, Justicia, Nous.
You may not like them much (who does?) but we owe them
basilicas, divas, dictionaries, pastoral verse,
the courtesies of the city: without these judicial mouths
(which belong for the most part to very great scoundrels)
how squalid existence would be, tethered for life to some hut village,
afraid of the local snake or the local ford demon,
speaking the local patois of some three hundred words
(think of the family squabbles and the poison-pens, think of the inbreeding) and, at this noon, there would be no authority to command this death.
3
Anywhere you like, somewhere on broad-chested life-giving Earth,
anywhere between her thirstlands and undrinkable Ocean,
the crowd stands perfectly still,
its eyes (which seem one) and its mouths
(which seem infinite^ many) expressionless, perfectly blank.
The crowd does not see (what everyone sees) a boxing match, a train wreck,
a battleship being launched,
does not wonder (as everyone wonders)
who will win, what flag she will fly, how many will be burned alive,
is never distracted
(as everyone is always distracted)
by a barking dog, a smell of fish, a mosquito on a bald head:
the crowd sees only one thing (which only the crowd can see),
an epiphany of that which does whatever is done.