WOODGATHERING: NOVEMBER SOVIET BOMB TESTS
This was not all, I knew; but won that time From worldfear. Like a room in heaven The afternoon opened from the rack and haze (Cold warring with sterile rain) of hangfire weather To vast detente above the sodden farm. New-rinsed lightfall roused the eye to climb From rainstripped elms to clerestoreys lost in space. The mountain round our shoulder curled its arm.
Your latest sins all scrubbed and tucked aside, You climbed the corded pile to the height of fame, There crowed at the reeling world, conjured the sun, And struck up with a deity never named In prayer or poem; finding him apt and kind, You chose him heavenly father, decreed his laugh That shook the stratosphere - and then in fun Landslid some logs to make me start and gasp.
No need for you to know the deed you did. (My favorite god unknows his own good works.) But those logs had to slip and crash and settle, Wantonly kicked by one do-nothing kid, Before my creeping spirit could subvert The curse of modern conscience and could flee The hounding dream of man. Your right to meddle With states of worldmind was nothing you got from me!
Now I derived from your official act My right to tell the world to go its way. High up in Sunday afternoon at last I hunted the uncaring bird of prey Whose kill gives life, whose meaning is the fact Of beauty, sure to bury all its foes Somewhen and always. Exulting in his grasp, I pitied my humanity's lost throes.
My hands clawed hardhack, maple, oak. Aloft you sang of the somewhere spinning sun Outside the bubble of our days we swam, Alike untouchable by fear or hope. Renegade, harmless, drunk with cosmic fun, Not caring for forgiveness or reproof, We coasted back to where the world began, And spoiled ourselves for any modern truth.
So magnified, then finished, I turned for love And looked both ways with earth-approaching eyes: The house was drawing dusk below, while you, Snug in your spirit's skin, small body gloved In royal flashing blue, pretended wise High in our meadow, with unprophetic view Stockingcap Highness a-sky on a barky throne, Teasing the world. I bowed my head for home.
