Burnt by lightning    nevertheless
she’ll walk this terra infinita

lashes singed on her third eye 

 

If your name is on the list of judges
you're one of them
though you fought their hardening

"Nothing he had done before
   or would try for later"
         will explain or atone

It would have made no difference who
commanded us in those first hours . . .
                                —veteran, invasion of Normandy, 1944

Voice
from the grain

of the forest bought

Piece by piece I seem
to re-enter the world: I first began

a small, fixed dot, I still can see

This morning, flakes of sun
peel down to the last snowholds,
the barbed-wire leavings of a war

Long ago I found a seed,
And kept it in a glass of water,
And half forgot my dim intent

Chagall’s sweet lovers mounting into blue
Remind me that discovery by two
Of any world the mind can wander through

All in the day that I was born,
I walked across the shouting corn,
I saw the sunlight flash and hail

It was amusing on that antique grass,
Seated halfway between the green and blue,
To waken music gentle and extinct.

Child with a chip of mirror in his eye
Saw the world ugly, fled to plains of ice
Where beauty was the Snow Queen’s promises,