The Fifteen Devices

When who we think we are is suddenly

Flying apart, splintered into

Acts we hardly recognize

As once our kin’s curious children,

I find myself turning my head

Round to observe and strangely

Accept expected astonishments

Of myself manifest and yet

Bereft somehow as I float

Out in an old-fashioned slow

Motion in all directions. I hope

A value is there lurking somewhere.

Whether it is the words we try

To hold on to or some other

Suggestion of outsideness at least

Not ourselves, it is a naked

State extremely uncomfortable.

My fifteen devices of shadow and brightness

Are settling in and the Madron

Morning accepts them in their places.

Early early the real as any

Badger in the black wood

Of Madron is somewhere going

His last round, a creature of words

Waiting to be asked to help me

In my impure, too-human purpose.

With me take you. Where shall you find us?

Somewhere here between the prised

Open spaces between the flying

Apart words. For then it was

All the blown, black wobblers

Came over on the first wind

To let me see themselves looking

In from a better high flocking

Organization than mine. They make

Between them a flag flying standing

For their own country. Down the Fore

Street run the young to the school bell.

Shall I pull myself together into

Another place? I can’t follow

The little young clusters of thoughts

Running down the summer side.

My fifteen devices in my work

Shop of shadow and brightness have

Their places as they stand ready

To go out to say Hello.