Cheat me with footprints on auburn, gold, purple

Out to the last violet shimmer of the float

Of the dream—and I will come straddling a jackass,

Singing a song and letting out hallelujahs

To the doorsill of the last footprint.”

And the man took a stub lead pencil

And made a long memo in shorthand

On the two blurry jackass ears:—

“God sits with long whiskers in the sky.”

I said it when I was a boy.

I said it because long-whiskered men

Put it in my head to say it

They lied . . . about you . . . God . . .

They lied. . . .

The other side of the five doors

and doorsills put in my house—

how many hinges, panels, doorknobs,

how many locks and lintels,

put on the doors and doorsills

winding and wild between

the first and the last doorsill of all?

“Out of the footprints on ten miles

of auburn, gold and purple—an old song comes:

These bones shall rise again,

Yes, children, these bones shall rise.

“Yonder past my five doors

are fifty million doors, maybe,

stars with knobs and locks and lintels,

stars with riders of rockets,

stars with swimmers of fire.

“Cheat my eyes—and I come again—

straddling a jackass—singing a song—

letting out hallelujahs.

“If God is a proud and a cunning Bricklayer,

Or if God is a King in a white gold Heaven,

Or if God is a Boss and a Watchman always watching,

I come riding the old ride of the humiliation,

Straddling a jackass, singing a song,

Letting out hallelujahs.

“Before a ten mile float

of auburn, gold, and purple,

footprints on a sunset airpath haze,

I ask:

How can I taste with my tongue a tongueless God?

How can I touch with my fingers a fingerless God?

How can I hear with my ears an earless God?

Or smell of a God gone noseless long ago?

Or look on a God who never needs eyes for looking?

“My head is under your foot, God.

My head is a pan of alkali dust

your foot kicked loose—your foot of air

with its steps on the sunset airpath haze.

(A bluejay blue

and a gray mouse gray

ran up the canyon walls.)

“Sitting at the rim of the big gap

at the high lash of the frozen storm line,

I ask why I go on five crutches,

tongues, ears, nostrils—all cripples—

eyes and nose—both cripples—

I ask why these five cripples

limp and squint and gag with me,

why they say with the oldest frozen faces:

Man is a poor stick and a sad squirt;

if he is poor he can’t dress up;

if he dresses up he don’t know any place to go.

“Away and away on some green moon

a blind blue horse eats white grass

And the blind blue horse knows more than I do

because he saw more than I have seen

and remembered it after he went blind.

“And away and away on some other green moon