Que bella!
The flagella of the beasts
That skate orchestral floors of ocean sea!
A thousand on a thousand probes go pianissimo
And, touching, tickle a response in me.
God tunes a blind pianoforte;
Where unseen hands place chord on chord,
There sounds the dumb cantata of the Lord.
Where pseudomorph and pseudopod
Harptune the cries that half-waked God must make
When, mindless of His kitchen tasks,
He cooks wild recipes of blood
In masks that shroud experiments in shadow shapes.
Nothing escapes His culinary trials;
Through cosmic miles of bestial grotesques
He runs surprising turns, tries arabesques,
And constantly
Seems quite as stunned as we
Who, given birth,
Stand in a light-swarmed puzzle-maze
Of sound and sight
And celebrate our bursting forth from night
On earth. We slip God’s mind. Blind to our birth
He turns to find this nothing, then that lack—
Slaps both on back!
In each He breathes,
And with one quick sharp shout
Astonishment bequeathes.
Then we and pseudopod
Guard our reward and thus reward our God.
And all the while in deeps, anemones
Gesticulate piano sands, enchant the seas
With sunken choirs, cathedral ruins, drowned symphonies.
Blindly they place a million tender tips
In chord on chord, and voiceless sing and earless tune
Unfinished fifths beyond the moon,
Where empty kitchens wait for Lord who knows not Lord
But builds him flesh on architectural flesh and grooms
That flesh to swim, walk, fly to greater rooms
Where cosmic life force ghost sees self on newfound
Mirrored self, with weeping eyes.
Then goes to sit with Him
At endless breakfastings
Of fresh surprise.