Holy Heathen Rhapsody Read Online Free PDF Page A

silence
    following might sense not an echo
    or a reflection but the single defining
    feature of that disappearance
    permeating the frigid air.
    When all the strings and wires of the piano’s
    final chord are stilled and soundless, the hands
    just beginning to lift from the keys, when the last
    declaration of the last crow swinging down
    into the broken stalks of the corn field ceases,
    when the river, roaring, bucking, and battering
    in its charge across the land, calms its frothy
    madness back to bed at last, then suspended
    in the space of silence afterward, may be
    a promise, may be a ruse.

THE DOXOLOGY OF SHADOWS
    They float and sweep. They flicker
    and unfold, having neither electrons
    nor atoms, neither grasp nor escape.
    Like skeletons, they could be
    scaffolds. They are visible echoes.
    Like scaffolds, they could be memory.
    When of cattails and limber willows
    on a summer pond, they are reverie.
    Layering each other in a windy
    forest, they can cover and disfigure
    a face to a puzzle of shifting pieces.
    If straight and unwavering when
    crossing grassy lawns and clearings,
    they are measures of time, true
    of direction. The shadows
    of minnows on the creek bed below
    are either darting ripples of black
    sun over the sand or reverse reflections
    of surge as fish, design as soul.
    They bring the devices and edicts
    of winter, of spring, into the house,
    over walls, ceilings, staircases—
    the inside motion of a blossom falling
    outside, a bird beyond the window
    swooping a passage of pure flight
    through the room. Shadow-drops
    pearl over sofa, table, books, replicating
    rain lingering in gold among leaves
    and branches at dusk.
    I sit on the floor within the shadow
    network of a winter elm, its architecture
    spread across the rug. The substance
    of this structure is less than the bones
    of a bumblebee bat, yet it holds me.
    Some shadows are much esteemed,
    those of canopies, awnings, and parasols.
    Many ancient tales record sightings
    of ostriches seeking the black relief
    of cloud shadows on the savannah,
    following them across the treeless plains
    like magi following the holy star.
    Maybe the metals of meteors, the drifting
    remnants of galactic debris, the ices
    and gravels of disintegrating comets
    in their orbits cast showers of tiny pale
    shadows (like spells or blessings or praises
    upon us) as they pass between sun and earth.
    With no fragrance—neither spicy, sweet,
    acrid, nor mellow—without sighs or summaries,
    without an aim of their own, like wraiths
    and ghosts with no heft of any kind—the sole
    matter of shadows is lack. Disappearing
    in darkness, they depend for their being
    on light. Therefore, they cannot be evil.
    Some people still do not believe.



SPEAK, RAIN
    Sound with the cries of Rachel’s children.
    Moan over empty hillsides and river runnels,
    among the broken stones of abandoned streets
    and fallen fences, through empty channels
    and sharp-ledged ravines resonant with echo.
    Rasp and rattle with the integrity of a perfect
    reckoning down the metal roof onto the splash
    pans of gutters, down the pipes of open sewers.
    Snore skywide with sporadic mumbles.
    Rumble from your own soul sources.
    Stutter erudite nonsense, a stentorian
    preaching from high altars, pellets clicking
    and tapping among the leathery leaves
    of oak and hickory in the upper towers
    of the kingly forest.
    Is that the giggling of lost Peter and Aaron
    pattering on the cold lake’s surface?
    Speak, an eloquence devoid of message
    in the silence of floating fog. I’m listening,
    the voice sinking among the invisible
    blades of the morning marsh.
    Tarry awhile in the dark, humming the sleep
    and lullaby common to that far place
    from which you have come.
    In retreat, challenge slowly in single words
    striking randomly:
now,
and now,
now,
    now and
now.
    In the dust, spit large rounded vowels.

WITHIN THE EARTH BENEATH US
    Our Father, who is the Passageway in the tunnel
    of the worm and the