poems44

THE BALL
What is the boy now, who has lost his ball,
What, what is he to do?? I saw it go
Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then
Merrily over - there it is in the water!!
No use to say �O there are other balls�;
An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boy
As he stands rigid, trembling, staring down
All his young days in the harbor where
His ball went. I would not intrude on him,
A dime, another ball, is worthless. Now
He senses first responsibility
In a world of possessions. People will take balls,
Balls will be lost always, little boy,
And no one buys a ball back. Money is external.
He is learning, well behind his desperate eyes,
The epistemology of loss, how to stand up
Knowing what every man must one day know
And most know many days, how to stand up.
And gradually light returns to the street,
A whistle blows, the ball is out of sight,
Soon part of me will explore the deep and dark
Floor of the harbor ... I am everywhere,
I suffer and more, my mind and my heart move
With all that move me, under the water
Or whistling, I am not a little boy.
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THE MEADOW
As if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
That is not mind, but is a made place,
That is mine, it is so near to the heart,
An eternal pasture folded in all thought
So that there is a hall therein
That is a made place, created by light
Where from the shadows that are forms fall.
Wherefrom all architectures I am
I say are likenesses of the First Beloved
Whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady.
She it is Queen Under The Hill
Whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words
That is a field folded.
It is only a dream of the grass blowing
East against the source of the sun
In an hour before the sun�s going down
Whose secret we see in a children�s� game
Of ring a round of roses told.
Often I am permitted to return to a meadow
As it were a given property of the mind
That certain bounds hold against chaos,
That is a place of first permission,
Everlasting omen of what is.
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So I said I am Ezra
And the wind whipped my throat
Gaming for the sounds of my voice
I listened to the wind
Go over my head and up into the night.
Turning to the sea I said
I am Ezra,
But there were no echoes from the waves.
The words were swallowed up
In the voice of the surf,
Or leaping over swells
Lost themselves oceanward.
Over the bleached and broken fields,
I moved my feet and turning from the wind,
That rippled sheets of sand
From the beach and threw them
Like seamists across the dunes,
Swayed as if the wind were taking me away
And said
I am Ezra
As a word too much repeated
Falls out of being
So I Ezra went out into the night
Like a drift of sand
And splashed among the windy oats
That clutch the dunes
Of unremembered sea.
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