In the mustardseed sun,
By full tilt river and switchback sea Where the cormorants scud,
In his house on stilts high among beaks And palavers of
This sandgrain day in the bent bay's grave He celebrates and
His driftwood thirty-fifth wind turned age; Herons spire and spear. Under and round him
Flounders, gulls, on their cold, dying trails, Doing what they are told,
Curlews aloud in the congered waves Work at their ways to death,
And the rhymer in the long tongued room, Who tolls his birthday bell,
Toesl towards the ambush of his wounds; Herons, stepple stemmed, bless. In the thistledown fall,
He sings towards anguish; finches fly In the claw tracks of
On a seizing sky; small fishes glide Through wynds and shells of
Ship towns to pastures of otters.
He In his slant, racking
And the hewn coils of his trade perceives Herons walk in their shroud, The livelong river's
Of minnows wreathing around their prayer; And far at sea he knows,
Who slaves to his crouched, eternal end Under a serpent cloud,
Dolphins dyive in their turnturtle dust, The rippled seals streak
To kill and their own tide daubing blood Slides good in the sleek mouth. In a cavernous,
Wave's silence, wept white angelus knells. Thirty-five bells sing
On skull and scar where his lovews lie wrecked, Steered by the falling stars.
And to-morrow weeps in a blind cage Terror will rage
Before chains break to a hammer flame And love unbolts the dark And freely he goes
In the unknown, famous light of great And fabulous, dear God.
Dark is a way and light is a place, Heaven that never
Nor will be ever is always true, And, in that brambled void,
Plenty as blackberries in the woods The dead grow for His joy. There he might wander
With the spirits of the horseshoe bay Or the stars' seashore dead,
Marrow of eagles, the roots of whales And wishbones of wild geese,
With blessed, unborn God and His Ghost, And every soul His priest,
Gulled and chanter in Young Heaven's fold Be at cloud quaking peace, But dark is a long way.
He, on the earth of the night, alone With all the living, prays,
Who knows the rocketing wind will blow The bones out of the hills,
And the scythed boulders bleed, and the last Rage shattered waters
Masts and fishes to the still quick starts, Faithlessly unto Him Who is the light of
And air shaped Heaven where souls grow wild As horses in the foam:
Oh, let me midlife mourn by the shrined And druid herons'
The voyage to ruin I must run, Dawn ships clouted aground,
Yet, though I cry with tumbledown tongue, Count my blessings aloud: Four elements and
Senses, and man a spirit in love Thangling through this spun
To his nimbus bell cool kingdom come And the lost, moonshine domes,
And the sea that hides his secret selves Deep in its black, base bones,
Lulling of spheres in the seashell flesh, And this last blessing most, That the closer I
To death, one man through his sundered hulks, The louder the sun
And the tusked, ramshackling sea exults; And every wave of the
And gale I tackle, the whole world then, With more triumphant
That ever was since the world was said, Spins its morning of praise, I hear the bouncing
Grow larked and greener at berry brown Fall and the dew larks
Taller this thunderclap spring, and how More spanned with angles
The mansouled fiery islands!
Oh, Holier then their eyes,
And my shining men no more alone As I sail out to die
