Through the veiled hush of the nut garden, God
was walking in the cool of the day; He
felt like talking again to a mortal

She feared hell, loved heaven, and the angel’s tooth
that gnaws away the flesh with temperance—
think of this woman, who was half a saint,

Crossing the land in a train, I passed through
the borderless townlets of sprawled New York
rising red brick out of nothing after

See how the god mounts her powerful back
and clasps the warrior thighs in his great loins,
smelling of dung and wild carrots. Rejoice

When I went up to Haworth there was peace
Between my teeth. An ordinary heart
Beat. My ordinary hands moved easily.

For how long did it live as a single thought
among the serene meditations of unschooled fish

I went with him. Paris who was not Paris
but a bright and rising constellation

When wind blows through the high windows of his skull
he stands absolutely still. At times he recalls the horizon

His letters say nothing of the sky, only the long burn
of hydrogen, felicity, the vertigo of momentary disbelief.

And spring once more, the sun made its rounds
over the mountainside
above our drafty house where the weak had lain