to
clean
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What shall we say to our sister?
Say that we have found a way to ground the sun,
say that we will come back over the rim of the world

It was no more than the description of a burst of rain 
and handkerchiefs of lightning which burned the secret of trees— 
then why did they resist her?

When you were a little girl you lived on a street that went up a hill and down it again, which gave you from the be- ginning a sense of purpose, a glandular sympathy with the ebb and flow of all life. You weren’t easily fooled, even as a child of seven you looked at the butcher with grave 

The brutes that graved on walls of rock
Patterns of their shaggy God
Knew His thunder, knew His sun,

I imagine: pyramids, obelisks,
the Valley of Kings, and one torn bra.

Thus freed from the mighty pencil, figures
flew over the walls of museums

It might be von Hirsau believed he composed
a celebration, these wood panels brushed
with egg and tempera, a medieval man's rendering

Sealed into the cocoon
Of light and water, face
And racked reflection, voice

Of this aspiring burgher who disdained
(Dumb in his pride of mortified reserve)
The usufruct of half a continent.