The Broken Tower

Uncollected

The bell-rope that gathers God at dawnDispatches me as though I dropped down the knellOf a spent day - to wander the cathedral lawnFrom pit to crucifix, feet chill on steps from hell.

Have you not heard, have you not seen that corpsOf shadows in the tower, whose shoulders swayAntiphonal carillons launched beforeThe stars are caught and hived in the sun’s ray?

The bells, I say, the bells break down their tower;And swing I know not where. Their tongues engraveMembrane through marrow, my long-scattered scoreOf broken intervals … And I, their sexton slave!

Oval encyclicals in canyons heapingThe impasse high with choir. Banked voices slain!Pagodas campaniles with reveilles out leaping-O terraced echoes prostrate on the plain! …

And so it was I entered the broken worldTo trace the visionary company of love, its voiceAn instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)But not for long to hold each desperate choice.

My world I poured. But was it cognate, scoredOf that tribunal monarch of the airWhose thighs embronzes earth, strikes crystal WordIn wounds pledges once to hope - cleft to despair?

The steep encroachments of my blood left meNo answer (could blood hold such a lofty towerAs flings the question true?) -or is it sheWhose sweet mortality stirs latent power?-

And through whose pulse I hear, counting the strokesMy veins recall and add, revived and sureThe angelus of wars my chest evokes:What I hold healed, original now, and pure …

And builds, within, a tower that is not stone(Not stone can jacket heaven) - but slipOf pebbles, - visible wings of silence sownIn azure circles, widening as they dip

The matrix of the heart, lift down the eyesThat shrines the quiet lake and swells a tower…The commodious, tall decorum of that skyUnseals her earth, and lifts love in its shower.

(uncollected)