against the shore in the early
morning, resting from his caprices;
the gentle sun parades
on his runneled gaze—he devotes
himself to watching it as one
devotes oneself to sleep;
the light becomes
his consciousness, warming him.
The river clears after the winter
floods; the slopes of the hills renew
the sun, diaphanous flower and leaf, blue-green
with distance;
this idle god dallies
in his shade, his mind adorned with stones.
At the river’s edge there is singing;
the townsmen have come down from their sleep,
their singing silences the birds;
they sing renewal beyond irreparable
divisions.
The god did not expect
these worshippers, but he hears
them singing, briefly as reeds
grown up by the water;
they go
away, the river re-enters
their silence
—and he watches
a white towboat approach, shoving
its rust-colored island of barges,
the sound of its engines filling his mind
the forked wake
wrinkles on his vision, pointing
to the corner of his eye,
and floats away;
the holiday fishermen
arrive—
a man and his wife
establish themselves on a sandbar, bringing
lunch in a basket, blankets, tackle
down the path through the young
horseweeds;
the woman smooths
a blanket on the sand, and begins
a ponderous sunbath, her eyes
covered, her skirt hoisted
above her knees;
the man
casts a baited line downstream
and uncaps a beer:
the god observes;
these are the sundry
objects of his thought.
He has watched the passing
of other boats, assemblages,
seasons, inundations,
boatmen
whose voyages bore down the currents
to the dark shores of their eyes
—and has forgotten them, innocent
of his seasonal wraths, his mischiefs
accomplished and portending, as his present
forbearance is innocent;
the perfection
of his forgetting allows the sun
to glitter
—the light
flows away, its blue and white
peeling off the green waves.
His mind contains
the river as its banks
constrain it, in a single act
receiving it and letting it go.