Light

For a certain doctrine have sunrise: great stone lips set in a vow
Of colour, words, oratory of birds; then the whirling brazen
Currencies of empire cast
Landward, all weathers, from the prow.
Subversive old silver in cloudbank falls out of grace,
Bladed golden oars haul the true disc to its place.
Time labours towards a meaning upon the wrist
—Never His meaning; can He be risen?

Come to the window, earlier, He may ponder the April mist
Before day swallows, ingests Him, offers libation
Of His primal thought, of His veins.
Night’s archaeologist,
He will con the old order steeped in narcosis, bone of her bone.
Coxcombry of time? the clock tower ticks by its lone,
A ploughshare might plot moon-courses over the plains:
Has He risen?

That one grizzled patriarchal visage of water still
Haunts the copse with a dream of order—candle and basin.
Cruciform aerials
Lean from the rooftops, would fall.
Trees, they yet figure the sacred credo and ark
Of night, loyal windsong, branches of marble: dark
Is the ruler of all earth, dwarfs the benighted hills:
But He, the Lover, is risen.

I might tell you of sheep growing from stupor, moving
As He moves, breathing as He, but safe in the frozen
Stances of night, night.
So the scrawl of fog, and the living
Grey upon pilgrimage, eastward, honour this sky.
Darkness is the ballad, colour, at the root of all memory.
He uncovers the tablet of darkness, that is the labour of light:
And He, of darkness, is risen.