VERSE
Fandel, John
JOHN FANDEL CONSEQUENCE I How we live long with pain, in limb or mind, With grief, with fears, all their close next of kin, Should make us Saints. But for the grace of God There go I without a...
...An owl is hooting in the local wood That day will be and shall be understood...
...V Pretend a day from dawn to midnight, fair In all a day can be, 'a life, in light Waxed from the first glow into risen stars, A day of perfect parts of the flawed days, And let this day stand for a life...
...The willow dells of shade screen petals, bare Glimpse of a flower, tens on thousands there...
...Firm me...
...A sum of summers simmers in our blood...
...What seems to be forgotten is assumed...
...Least likeliest has burgeoned into be...
...A lily floating on calm water will Appear to be its own reflection still...
...Autumn speaks for itself in what time tells...
...The singing birds have found the quiet trees Wherein they rest unruffled as the breeze...
...A cricket strumming night into a surd Is for some seconds in blurred millions heard...
...III We are more than we are in what we are...
...Lord, my bones melt, my flesh as waxen, damps Blotting paper...
...Winters of wrack and wear add up to years- Not to tally spring false in the pulse...
...II Not in whole mornings, noons, long afternoons, Evenings lingering towards dusky stars, Nor night still moonshine pearling into dawn, Do the whole sequences of joy remain Images, recollected...
...IV Working a task into a loss of self That not the least bright second of a life Lessens to make us other than the act, Praying, weeding, mechanics of the world, Or lost in music, art, a lyric line, This makes the whole, summed parts can never add, A happiness in being unaware, A happiness without identity, A joy without the consciousness of joy, The purity, the perfect realm of peace We know sometimes uninterrupted, so Being more selved than we imagine it...
...I put these platitudes upon the line As fresh as they were Adam's taking stock Of what he was as what we are in all...
...But for the grace of God There go I without a care in the world, Tourist of the postlapsarian dayI said my prayers, ate my daily breadTaking a stroll on eastofeden lawns...
...snapshot scenes, Slides of the memory preserve the days Darkling, as chinks in castellated walls Let sequins of light through as if light were Dispensing fireflies to disperse the dark, Medieval eras of primeval mind We know contemporaneous as now In flicks of sun on quartz, a drop of dew...
...Let me look upon my shadow Yet one more day, once more, one sun again...
...We'd be quite other than we are for that...
...Send Thou, O most holy Ghostly maker, spirit for clay like this...
...Sometimes The pieces are the whole of anything, As in a shard of crystal, spheres of world Become the world, a sphere wherein to see Eternity restored in points of it, And we, at last, no matter but its point Focused so fine, forgotten is to be, As midnight stops upon the dark of dawn...
...All we have passed through is a part of us...
Vol. 101 • January 1975 • No. 11
