It seemed time to be getting underway with things,
despite what they’d warned us about some strings
which had snapped at the height of that chorus we sang.
Yes, we’re even now recovering from that pang!
Of course, we’d get on with it if we could.
Were it merely a matter of the will, we would!
There was no hope, they’d said, of pounding airs from wood –
anymore than wine may be seeped from blood.
Regardless of what we remembered we once sang,
forgotten were the coordinates of that clang.
And one knows not, without them, what one sings –
nor the air itself, nor the grid to which it clings.
How long are men to bereave themselves of their clang?
We whet (are whetted) on that question’s fang
(to put it in a way that intimates of blood –
though you might just as soon analogize the Flood…
renewal and the Ark to which it clings,
scattering doves of perseverance out in rings).
Through liquid images, blood percolates to flood –
though you’re welcome to fashion it a brood,
affiliated both by footprint and by fang,
who gather together, where once the triads rang.
Or spread themselves in concentering rings,
overmounting their terrain on extended wings.
The lacquer is scratched on bells that formerly rang –
faded, the tapes that recorded that twang.
We’re left with the words we intoned – a wordy brood –
and the scraps with which we began: our dirt, our food.
Ciphers of the weather accrue in wings,
and at their vanguard something bumbles, armed with stings.
Men, to be sure, must ride higher than dirt and food.
Beyond the scrub, are there trees in this wood?
Bye and bye Mnemosyne returns us our twang;
unbeknownst to us, she unremembers that pang.
Swords smite, then they heal. So guilt with its stings.
Alas! All along, we’ve been underway with things!
Having promised we would, we will to what we sang,
regaining our things from an eon’s pang.
“We can, because we could!” summons Truth from the strings.
[Previous: Steeplechase: Notes on John Ashbery's "Clepsydra"]
[Next: Wallace Stevens]