St. Jerome  by Albrecht Durer

Adagio

For St. Jerome

 In the waning afternoon,

When day its discourse ends,

And evening steals upon the earth,

Jerome, who cannot sleep,

Sits and reads, yet his mind

Wanders from the verse,

And he slowly bows his head

Before the vision of all

He does not know,

And Jesus, whom he does not

Yet love enough at all, worshipping

Him, the Holy Incomprehensible,

Whose gentle breeze sets his old bones

Trembling, new again in longing

To grasp the One Who grasped him,

Longing now in age to pass on

To Heaven, to leave the tortured earth,

And all the miseries and wiles

Of Satan, to leave behind his mediocrity,

To be purified and taken to Christ’s Heart,

Still the afternoon declines, and takes

Its leave, as early evening brings on

The dusk which has no shadows,

And Jerome turns to gaze through the panes,

And feels the unbearable anguish

Of the going of the light,

And the unbearable rest

Where Jesus draws him to His bosom,

So the old man weeps hard tears,

Tears which dredge gorges

In his soul, tears of sorrow

And of love, and long desire,

 Waiting.

July 20, 2002

Pythia After Closing

The Shrine at Nightfall

Andante

A la notte oscura

 I leap in the god, igniting with fiery sinews,

Till, writhing for splendor, he releases, and, a cur

Whipped by his Beauty, I slink away, whining,

Night trails, over Delphi, its starry veil of sleep,

While, though hushed, Phoebus’ shrine rises up in darkness,

Breeze freshens and lamps huddle in canopies of light,

I, Apollo’s mouth, his Rapture’s burning lyre,

Slump, staring, bewildered, deafened by his Song,

Torn by the thousand tongues that shouted,

A sea of grief encircles me, so I shudder in the tumult

Of far seeing, become for him an isle off a broken coast,

Where pounded rock makes glory of the waves,

Everything quavers through the curtain of tears,

Yet they wash to no sleep, no sweet forgetfulness,

For I am hunger for the flashing of Deity,

Does he care, the one so Other, standing in the light

On far Olympus, want me now, who, spent,

Am heaped in this hut, a thing thrown away,

Waiting in dread the morrow, dawn that seizes

My brow, breaks me to the tripod and the sulfur vent,

The shriek and the swift raving cascades of Beauty?

Or am I but his pleasure’s poppet, dandled for an hour,

Till he untie my senses, strike my reason down,

So I tug and bark, become some frantic Cerebrus,

And am no longer once lovely Pythia of Delphi?

For Kathryn Scarano

Adagio

  I have gone down into the dark,

Down to the places under the earth,

Where no light is, and I but barely breathe,

I have gone down from the perfect

Afternoon, bright blue skies,

The glass of wine, the fond embrace,

To the empty place where the heart

Is halt, and the hard breath

Is knotted beneath my breast,

In the vast caverns of the night

The words seep towards me,

Pool, and still to silence,

Where will I find the sighs

To pray, fallen out of brilliant day,

In this hour of evacuation,

Calando

Where tears flood words away?

For Sherri Grant