Two Poems for the Seventeenth Century

Donald Revell

FOR THOMAS TRAHERNE

The ground is tender with cold rain

Far and equally

Our coastlines grow younger

With tides

Beautiful winter

Not becoming spring today and not tomorrow

Has time to stay

Easter will be very late this year

Thirty years ago

I saw my church

All flowery

And snow

Melting in the hair of the procession

As tender as today

A sight above all festivals or praise

Is earth everywhere

And all things here

Becoming younger

Facing change

In the dark weather now like winter

Candling underground as rain

FOR ANDREW MARVELL

Tiger of luster of swordplay is just a stick

On a sandpile

I remember because everything is all of its characteristics

Apart just once

Together for eternity in death’s unlimited magic

Ilex conjures acanthus

I’ve never tasted quince I like the snow apple

Filled with sirocco

An austere example

And my son knows

In his tigerish swordplay

Once apart as I board the usual airplane

I remember

Magic I’ve taken from his hand and pressed like sharp sharp sand into mine