Sea breeze strung round the spinner's arm
Fingers to moist silk on the drop-spindle
Eyelash heddle hooks
Pull the sun's warp tight-
The loom woofed
The weft shuttles
A thin mirror
To kneel on.
It is a wall piece of sailors
Hung in a still dimension
Prayer
Waiting calmed beneath cathedral skies
Sails slack for lack
Of dusk-spun breeze.
The wafer sun stands
Face hushed-
Green mural
Through which the gold legs rush
Ripples
Silver down the Christian wall.
Like Hagia Sophia
Inside
Cloud-wash about the dome
Reflects
Long shadows above,
And beneath the face of our Father
Sunning over us.
Sailors hung before the sea
Like painters on a stage
Doing billboard advertisments by the road
No movement in the face they hang to paint
For Isidorus needs appearance;
Golden hair
Halo
Golden robe
Raised hand
Done in the light of fading sun
As advertised in Bynzantium
To show tanning creams
When justly used
Sift violet rays from light
And free, burn free
Leave you young
Posed
Select from change
Between new wine
and wind down-night
(It is that way
Till focus changes tides)
Tides running up mast
Make tanned bodies
Press tightly to the green wall
Hugging Sun's knees
Frightened of dream-falling backwards
From the boat
Like old paint peeling
From a sign-
Whitewash (skin from burned backs)
Flakes
Leaving violet flesh before us
This is the body golden
Fingers stitch at
Beneath the robe
Raised hand
And halo in the sun-
Flesh exposed where creams can't color
The sear recognition
We risk deceit from
Cleaning dull thought from the tile wall
Finished
Start from stage to door-
Distance shallows stage to floor-
The ladder juts pencil-patterned
From the scaffold - intellect tells
Fifty feet above the ground-
What sailor walks saintly
Out and down when the eye says out
And the mind down-
A dimensional penance death felt
Dreaming in night's kingdom.
No wind
But dry wine
In moon's quiet-
Christ steps from the boat
And walks upon water
An interceding butterfly
Tasting yellow in his own time
Quick
Around the carnage of his tome
Unravels space from sail to sky
Around and under draws the sea
Turned erect
Eyes closed to the ladder
Wrung by pencil wrung
Float firm in faith
To the cloistral ground-
Up there
Light-warp through church pendentives
Illume Him
Singing airy on Sun's shaft
To the wall where wings enfolded
Like the word
He broods
For the new day
And the word of his new day burns
On silk sails
Gold
As the sun-wound body
Of the sign
And beats to the final twine
A tapesty strung for people-
O Poet, lay it down
And pray.