Evening Meditation in a Cathedral Town: Balloon Flight: Starry Night on the Rhone: Barclay's Pond
Pratt, C.W. & Deppe, Theodore & Mattern, Evelyn
C.W.Pratt Evening Meditation in a Cathedral Town Transparent on transparency, A laccwing on the windowpane. Pale green traceries of vein In the lancets of its wings sustain A membrane too...
...Nothing left to lose But each other...
...Finally, when you have noted well the old rowboat beached at die edge, its waterproof companion pointed towards the underworld, pure and fitting craft for die journey, lose yourself at last in die sky underneath, its very existence attending upon your refusal to stick your foot in it...
...That three hours of looking at die divine Melancholy of Christ Crucified in polychrome, of a saint unzipped by die saw...
...Were worth more than a thief could imagine wanting...
...Lace wing, I look through you and glass to where Beyond the fields the late sun condescends To denseness, and its true brightness bends And bursts to beauty where the transparent ends...
...Small concentration of the evening air...
...Such precious straining of die light Surprises stone and souls of stone to flight...
...Of being so crudely known, And after the . bored Detective had listed our losses, And we'd gone to die consulate, And canceled our credit cards, The sudden recognition, driving norm from Barcelona In our rented ear-Not stolen...
...In the cathedral treasury I've gated, unmoved, at the Virgin's shift...
...Draped hke dead insect wings — enough, The histories repeat, to lift That heap of masonry so high...
...Others believed in it...
...After the First dizzying Sense of violation...
...Of Mary grave with private knowledge...
...Pratt Balloon Flight The surprising joy of Being robbed...
...becomes With four candles the slow burning on the brim painful curve of your hat you use you set up your canvas to suture up on the far bank the dark flaps of the Rhone of the night...
...A mercy...
...As tranquil on the mystery Of glass as if taught by its wings How to put faith in invisible things...
...now I Where the great stained windows raise Their winged parabolas of praise Day after day can bring to graze, Sheepish, my agnostic eye...
...Theodore Deppe Starry Might on tho Rhono Already painting stars that come two years before your death down closer night has come to seem than the town, far mote alive The Great and richly colored Bear of Aries than die day...
...In slow sweeps back and forth it swings Its frail antennae thoughtfully, Like compasses that leave no mark: Geometers imagining the arc...
...Evelyn Mattern Barclay's Pond See mis dependent world: look first at die pond birds flying underneath us, wings rippling in die floating sky...
...Pale green traceries of vein In the lancets of its wings sustain A membrane too fine for the eye...
...dien at die shell-shaped island hanging by its knees in die center, a slightly cupped palm for cattails, willows beginning, grasses, and cowbtrd feathers caught on dead branches...
...And then, crossing die border Without passport, Waved on by die indifferent guard, An elation as of ballast cast off, As of floating upwards together, free, Windborne, anonymous...
Vol. 112 • March 1985 • No. 6
