Looking Beyond the Solstice

I

Time is space a Japanese
Print would enclose with seacoast
Or temple walls and furnish
With pine, peony or stone.

Time: springwork of the
Universe unwinding,
Silent water all unflowing;
Line nor circle answers: all a maze.

A hill grows toward the sky
Almost nothing in a day;
A pebble shifts an inch toward
The sea: Will I speak?

II

Advance and retreat of the
Year’s armies confounded in
Self-combat: pawns fall bloody—
Red or bloodless, yellow-dry.

At night, the bitch cries at pups
Birthing, forgetful of the
Moan she made at their begett-
Ing, or bitten nursing, or

Without child to suckle.
The moon watches burning, white,
Or black, uncaring, falling back,
Swells to greatness, only to be

Caught and by the sun devoured,
Unless the sun forgetting
Old perfidy feels the bite
Of her dark mouth. Sharp tooth

Seasons well enough to make
The soul feel pain, pierced by frost
Or heat where the root joins the
Body. Both burn the petal:

Resolution in ice or
Flame with no delay for
Contemplation at the poles
Or in passage; passage is

Reason enough, mutation
Is the form’s revelation.
What can thought, faced with this, do?
Run myths to earth; stop all the

Spinning drift of galaxies;
Make motion be implied in
Static essence, the seasons
Be mandalic symbols mind

Can operate? Be content
That thought does not fly south in
Winter; but take more care lest
The labyrinthine animism

Bound in tree and leaf should find
All the world objectified
In desert, unbind itself
And build again its halls in

Man’s poor mind.

III

Higher peaks whitened to a line
Still above the hills near the valley,
Mist hides the highest:
All white, tree and earth and stone.

Brown scrub lowers
Rain-darkened beneath grey walls,
A dearth felt winter will fill;
Winter sits about us,

Mirthless, her line threatening grim
Fall for leaf and dust; limbs will
Lie shattered, trees learn to bear
Their loveless burdens, though now

The wine of rotting apples
Rests in skins the worms have claimed,
As if the days would wait for
Sour juice to mellow; bare

Trees await their harvest; un-
Prophetable birds flee south,
Unwilling to eye the slate
Waters for a resting place

Among the rushes. But dark
Blood-purple berries, holy
Ivy, oak, reddened by the fall frosts,
Give consent that soon

Falling snow be white:
Metaphor of birth.