Sestina: Matins
“Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either heretofore or since thou hast spoken to thy servant; but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” — Exodus 4:10
On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews…. — John 20:19
Keep this vigil: Sit by a quiet fire,
Keep silence, as though silence were the eye
Of a storm. And when the full moon has risen,
A final vowel on the blue tongue of twilight,
Follow its inflections into the weary
Hours when it grows fat and hollow with dawn.
Once I sat near a sleeping girl, as dawn
Came to Boston like a warehouse fire.
The warm curve of her flesh was weary
Of itself; her dreams stunned the window's eye,
Filled the room with their own busy twilight.
I broke my vigil and washed— the sun had risen.
And when I returned, the girl too had risen,
Dressed, and left me a litany of dawn
Breaking over hidden shoals: the twilight
Of deserted sheets, the shudder of a fire
As it dies, the wandering of a blind eye.
Such a long good-bye, no wonder we were weary.
The doors are bolted, and my tongue is weary
With denials. No healing word has risen
To my lips, no prayer to lead me through an eye
Of stone, an empty tomb. Now it is dawn.
Keep this silence: it pricks the palm of fire
That grips the east, and sets aglow the twilight
Of the last cry, calming that troubled twilight,
That halting murmur into which all weary
Voices die. The tongues of this night's fire
Have come to this, all but these ashes risen,
And the smell of woodsmoke sweet and stale at dawn,
And a wisp of silence in the wind's eye.
Day chatter and a dog's half-open eye
Conjure solid kitchen things from twilight.
Clap goes the mousetrap moments after dawn
Has stained the countertops. Come forth! The weary
Spring speaks, and the hour of mice is risen,
As the sun bitches at the bones of the fire.
Keep this vigil: Close your weary eyes.
Let dawn pass; leave the room in twilight.
Let the fire of silence rise.
DL