Now, with the wind and the sulfur of May, the dark
fields divided, fiefs of shadows, men of arms,
regents and kings and chancellors dread,
black falconry. Summer, a dead warrior’s arm –
will it light the torches of paroxysmal September?
The space of being in tension,
motive space, the disc of the sun
that reels beyond being, immobile incandescence
assuaging the gesture adjourned and freezing
this world’s white flicker, blind clarity,
umbrous ecstasy of galley slaves’ eyes.
Thus the eagle finds morning: shadow
is its morning, and the open field of agony and zeal
when depleted, the sky, febrile, and laggard
from its nocturnal past and its rout
in the forests, harvests black scythes and dominion,
and sovereign, bares the brightness of May,
swaddles me in evening blue – fallow frost –
and in silence, the eyes of a polecat
clutch the world. Mad night of May,
night of beatings and chastisements! Green,
the violet sky looms over me. Snow, persecutions.
No clemency, no clamor. The valley obeisant,
laid bare by the light, legacy
and complot of crime. Under the ashen combat,
like lances, the forests sway.