Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

Because here I am constructed of space and time
Star dust and velocity, and you as well
We speed, spin, and oscillate on different planes
Sometimes sliding close
Often in far different domains
Entirely separate, yet sharing all the same.

"Love abounds in all things
excels from the depths to beyond the stars."

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

I am going have gone will go
I am knowing have known will know
Where when why is less certain
I am making have made will make
I am spending have spent will spend
Most benefits yet well-hidden
Self succeeds self in function
As form unfolds entropically

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

Because I cannot find words that translate for you
This hoping fearing yearning breeding experience
Even my questions are misunderstood
Leaving between you and me mere murmurs
Roughly reciprocal gestures
Trite transactions of diminishing value
When I want to say: please share today
And you will hear with hypertext
My whole intention
Songs philosophy prayers and possibility unveiled

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I cannot see clearly
but as through a glass darkly
Because I cannot perceive
beyond time and space (this narrow place)
and even here am quickly overawed
Because I cannot fully receive
the intricate connections in any single moment

Ash Wednesday

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I am stubborn
Because I am proud
Because I am separate
Wanting to be loved for good cause
I wrestle daily with better angels
Striving to see, say, and succeed
With aplomb
Even as I sag, slump and slip.

From a far tower 

I watch a silver moon rising

I hear the tide break below

I savor a smoky armagnac

and as her scent surrounds me

I brush the cusp of chaos

Partage de la partie anges

Adams' reconciling aesthetic
Admired Mont-Saint-Michel
But was entirely seduced by the
Virgin rising from the wheat fields of Beauce
Perpetual pubescent of grace, beauty, and smiles.

Mont-Saint-Michel is her male complement
Rocky isle midst complicated currents
Tall gates heavy doors narrow windows
Archaic archangel rather than prismatic young girl
Close quarters dark shadows and surging sea

Mont-Saint-Michel

It was near New Year's
A winter wind dancing
On the shore before Mont-Saint-Michel
Rising from sands and placid sea

Here was realized the "unity of
Church and State, God and Man,
Peace and War, Life and Death,
Good and Bad;
It solved the whole problem of the universe."

Henry Adams confidently claimed.

Sweeney shifts from ham to ham
Stirring the water in his bath.
The masters of the subtle schools
Are controversial, polymath.

Keeping my cold feet
Safely from her flame
In wet woolen socks
of specious self-sufficiency.

Along the garden-wall the bees
With hairy bellies pass between
The staminate and pistilate,
Blest office of the epicene.

I delight in all her forms
Warm to hear her voice
But despite her beauty
Do not invite her caress.

Under the penitential gates
Sustained by staring Seraphim
Where the souls of the devout
Burn invisible and dim.

It is a fertile female holiness
Warm womb from which the Trinity will come
Woman, wife, and mother aware of her allures
Seductive innocence stirring sublimate desire.
---
Stained glass: Saints Margaret and Catherine, where Catherine persuades the pagan scholars with her arguments.

The sable presbyters approach
The avenue of penitence;
The young are red and pustular
Clutching piaculative pence.

Stereotypical tourists
Shuffling silently across the slate
Several surprised by tears
Wounded by sudden sacred assault.

But through the water pale and thin
Still shine the unoffending feet
And there above the painter set
The Father and the Paraclete.

Deep within the dark and dim
For more than seven centuries
Bare feet lift to conflagration
In always freezing February.

---
Note

A painter of the Umbrian school
Designed upon a gesso ground
The nimbus of the Baptized God.
The wilderness is cracked and browned

But among these stones, shadows breed
Blue to gray to black
Even a thousand candles can not exceed
What my heart does lack.

In the beginning was the Word.
Superfetation of τό ἕν,
And at the mensual turn of time
Produced enervate Origen. 

In the beginning the earth was without form and void
For chaos is pregnant with possibility
Creating is to conceive (perceive?) shape translate
There was light and it was good.

Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service

Look, look, master, here comes two religious caterpillars.
                                                              Jew of Malta.

POLYPHILOPROGENITIVE
The sapient sutlers of the Lord
Drift across the window-panes.
In the beginning was the Word.

---

O Lord, help me be pure. But not yet.
                                          Augustine of Hippo

SOLA GRATIA, SOLUM AMORE DEI
It is cool, dark, and mostly blue
Several shades of indigo with flecks of red
The last light of a winter afternoon.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

We proceed, noticing or not, together or apart
Making taking giving buying, rarely singing
Often choosing to descend
Rather than accede to a reign of abundant beauty.

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

Life is a double helix, two parallel paths
Linking past pain prior passion perplexing now
Ascending toward an embrace far beyond The Kiss.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly

The dark streets of the great city sparkle with light
Vast wealth profound poverty side by side
"I am homeless" printed neatly on cardboard
"Sale" in tall red letters just over his shoulder
Each waiting, hoping, inviting my notice.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kiking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

The choir departed, a Bach prelude began
Its low register blending with the subway grumbling beneath
The boys and men appeared again, processing behind a cross
Singing of one sweet, one mild (one sent to be tortured and die?)
Birth to death is the expected path: yet pain and suffering surprise
Beauty is desired but seldom expected quite often rejected.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation; 
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness, 
And three trees on the low sky, 
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then at dusk to vespers at Saint Thomas
The choir still rehearsing as I slipped in
Little boys and grown men all in bright red
Singing brightly of magi veniunt
Wise men coming from the east to Jerusalem.

A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night, 
Sleeping in snatches, 
With the voices singing in our ears, saying 
That this was all folly.

Walking south on Fifth Avenue
Past the Met and to the Frick
Yellows, blues, and rusty reds
Each leap from the street
Yet Picasso said color is weak.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:

Picasso in Black and White is at the Guggenheim
Humanity exposed transformed transcended
Ascends a single helix as potent nucleotides
Each with its own secret, achieve apoapsis
With a Kiss (1969) and then slowly I descend.

And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Today I take the train to New York
To talk of whirlwind, flood, and fire
Leaving quite early so to make time
First for art and then a few oysters
The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the tongue with tasting.

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.

It's been seasonal, sunny
Very pleasant to be home
After arduous holiday travel
Crowded, cloudy and cold
Though still quite early winter.