Invariably dawn seeps stinging in quiet eyes.
The fleshed sky sheds
The stars; the street’s bruised lattices
Take light like reason sounding the shreds of dream,
Whore’s sigh or wheat’s sigh, windspeeding, racing
The disappearance of the song of sleep
Backward along the street.
First lights are thin,
Transparencies of lambent brick and stone;
Day’s instant is the scent of loam and dew,
Here, too, in our monoxide town.
Come now the first folk, prowler and scurrier,
Wolf Fang and Tender Heart who pause,
Alert to cock the eye
Backward to darkness eroding there
Where the street dissolves and shadows change
In shapes we knew and almost know,
Hesitating now toward day.
But this street curves from darkness to the dawn
And further, there and there, through field and farm,
Through forests, seas, far in the firmament,
Transmigrant in actual things, thus merciful,
The gift of ultimacy in our opening world,
And so our bravest thought unpent; a road
Ascending the perfect sweep of consciousness,
Tilting upon new densities, new deeps,
To inventories never calendared;
A rising nave through painted scenes that deepen
In hue and roundness as we emerge from sleep
And stand enlightened; outward and away,
To the pensive ecstasies of realization!
And dawn is musical with starling song.
Winds glide on snaky tails among the gutters
In pirouettes of trash, while we inspect
Death’s kingdom unconcealed in darkened shops.
And trees seem grand and personal once more,
The hour’s appropriate sounds, horn and cock crow,
Make distance true again, and dogs come home,
And footsteps ring across the brilliant air.
The moment is perpetual. Thus the street’s
Auroras linger where intelligence
Flings motes of being down the way,
Verities of instance, forms
Of yes. Presence tugs
In the brain. Is this the light
That masters vision? Indeed,
Indeed. Look-one street
Like a plume of worlds,
Hovering, extending, venturing:
Modes of acceptance light our actual scenes;
Acceptance is this light of the changeless dawn.
Come, first folk,
All neighbors, come.
The street’s dominion ranks beyond the sun,
Our realm, the absolute country,
Spacious and beautiful, superb with things;
In them our proof, this unity,
Crammed blessing.
The dark lies at our backs and scandal there.
Good friends, shall we march now, shall we begin,
We worldly with splendored eyes?
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