It becomes the scholar again, seeking celestial

Rendezvous,

Picking thin music on the rustiest string,

Squeezing the reddest fragrance from the stump

Of summer.

The venerable song falls from your fiery wings.

The song of the great space of your age pierces

The fresh night.

Certain Phenomena of Sound

I

The cricket in the telephone is still.

A geranium withers on the window-sill.

Cat’s milk is dry in the saucer. Sunday song

Comes from the beating of the locust’s wings,

That do not beat by pain, but calendar,

Nor meditate the world as it goes round.

Someone has left for a ride in a balloon

Or in a bubble examines the bubble of air.

The room is emptier than nothingness.

Yet a spider spins in the left shoe under the bed—

And old John Rocket dozes on his pillow.

It is safe to sleep to a sound that time brings back.

II

So you’re home again, Redwood Roamer, and ready

To feast … Slice the mango, Naaman, and dress it

With white wine, sugar and lime juice. Then bring it,

After we’ve drunk the Moselle, to the thickest shade

Of the garden. We must prepare to hear the Roamer’s

Story … The sound of that slick sonata,

Finding its way from the house, makes music seem

To be a nature, a place in which itself

Is that which produces everything else, in which

The Roamer is a voice taller than the redwoods,

Engaged in the most prolific narrative,

A sound producing the things that are spoken.

III

Eulalia, I lounged on the hospital porch,

On the east, sister and nun, and opened wide

A parasol, which I had found, against

The sun. The interior of a parasol,

It is a kind of blank in which one sees.

So seeing, I beheld you walking, white,

Gold-shined by sun, perceiving as I saw

That of that light Eulalia was the name.

Then I, Semiramide, dark-syllabled,

Contrasting our two names, considered speech.

You were created of your name, the word

Is that of which you were the personage.

There is no life except in the word of it.

I write Semiramide and in the script

I am and have a being and play a part.

You are that white Eulalia of the name.

Dutch Graves in Bucks County

Angry men and furious machines

Swarm from the little blue of the horizon

To the great blue of the middle height.

Men scatter throughout clouds.

The wheels are too large for any noise.

And you, my semblables, in sooty residence

Tap skeleton drums inaudibly.

There are shouts and voices.

There are men shuffling on foot in air.

Men are moving and marching

And shuffling lightly, with the heavy lightness

Of those that are marching, many together.

And you, my semblables—the old flag of Holland

Flutters in tiny darkness.

There are circles of weapons in the sun.

The air attends the brightened guns,

As if sounds were forming

Out of themselves, a saying,

An expressive on-dit, a profession.