Iii

Capped arbiter of beauty in this street That narrows darkly into motor dawn,-- You, here beside me, delicate ambassador Of intricate slain numbers that arise In whispers, naked of steel; religious gunman! Who faithfully, yourself, will fall too soon, And in other ways than as the wind settles On the sixteen thrifty bridges of the city: Let us unbind our throats of fear and pity.

We even, Who drove speediest destruction In corymbulous formations of mechanics,-- Who hurried the hill breezes, spouting malice Plangent over meadows, and looked down On rifts of torn and empty houses Like old women with teeth unjubilant That waited faintly, briefly and in vain:

We know, eternal gunman, our flesh remembers The tensile boughs, the nimble blue plateaus, The mounted, yielding cities of the air!

That saddled sky that shook down vertical Repeated play of fire--no hypogeum Of wave or rock was good against one hour. We did not ask for that, but have survived And will persist to speak again before All stubble streets that have not curved To memory, or known the ominous lifted arm That lowers down the arc of Helen’s brow To saturate with blessing and dismay.

A goose, tobacco and cologne-- Three winged and gold-shod prophecies of heaven, The lavish heart shall always have to leaven And spread with bells and voices, and atone The abating shadows of our conscript dust.

Anchises’ navel, dripping of the sea,-- The hands Erasmus dipped in gleaming tides, Gathered the voltage of blown blood and vine; Delve upward for the new and scattered wine, O brother-thief of time, that we recall. Laugh out the meager penance of their days Who dare not share with us the breath released, The substance drilled and spent beyond repair For golden, or the shadow of gold hair.

Distinctly praise the years, whose volatile Blamed bleeding hands extend and thresh the height The imagination spans beyond despair, Outpacing bargain, vocable and prayer.