I
“For the flower glorifies God and the root parries the adversary. For the right names of flowers are yet in heaven. God make gardners better Nomenclators.”
For cosmos, which has too much to live up to,
for hyacinth, which stands for all the accidents of love,
for sunflower, whose leanings we can well understand, for fox
glove
and buttercup and snapdragon and candytuft and rue,
and for baby’sbreath, whose pre-Freudian white we value,
and for daisy, whose little sun confronts the big one
without despair, we thank good gardeners who pun
with eye and heart, who wind the great corkscrew
of naming into the cork on what we know.
While the root parries the adversary, the rest
nuzzles upward through pressure to openness,
and grows toward its name and toward its brightness and
sorrow.
And we pray to be better nomenclators, at home
and in field, for the sake of the eye and heart and the claim
of all who come up without their right names,
of all that comes up without its right name.
II
“For I bless God for the Postmaster General and all conveyancers of letters under his care especially Allen and Shelvock.”
Pastor of these paper multitudes,
the white flocks of our thought that run back and forth,
preserve the coming and going of each nickel’s worth
that grazed on the slope of the brain or trotted from its inroads.
And all proxies who step to the door in the stead of the upper
left hand corner, keep coming to every house,
that even the most feeble narration may find its use
when it falls into the final slot of the eye, that the mapper
of human dimension may distend that globe each day
and draw each day the connecting network of lines
that greetings and soapflake coupons and valentines
make between one heart and another. We pray
especially for the postman with a built-up shoe who likes dogs
and the one at the parcel post window who bears with good
grace
the stupid questions of ladies, and we especially bless
the back under every pack, and the bands, and the legs.
III
“Let Huldah bless with the Silkworm—the ornaments of the Proud are from the Bowells of their Betters.”
It was a proud doorway where we saw the spider drop
and swing to drop and swing his silk, the whole
spider rose to raise it, to lower it, fell,
and dangled to make that work out of his drip.
Not speculation, but art. Likewise the honeypot
that makes a fine table, an ornament to bread.
The bees danced out its plot, and feed our pride,
and milked themselves of it, and make us sweet.
And long library shelves make proud homes.
One line, a day in Bedlam, one book, a life
sometimes, sweated onto paper. What king is half
so high as he who owns ten thousand poems?
And the world is lifted up with even more humble words,
snail-scum and limey droppings and fly-blow
and gold loops that dogs have wetted on snow-
all coming and going of beasts and bugs and birds.
IV
“Let Jamen rejoice with the bittern blessed be the name of Jesus for Denver Sluice, Ruston, and the draining of the fens.”
And let any system of sewage that prospers say,
“I am guide and keeper of the human mess,
signature in offal of who, over the face
of the great globe, moves, and is the great globe’s glory.
And any long paving, let it utter aloud,
“I bear the coming together and the going apart
of one whose spirit-and-dirt my spirit-and-dirt
eases in passage, for the earth cherishes his load.”
Let drainage ditches praise themselves, let them shout,
“I serve his needs for damp and dryness.” Let mansions
cry, “We extend his name with our extensions,”
and let prefabricated houses bruit
their mounting up in a moment to preserve this creature.
Let the great globe, which rolls in the only right air,
say, “He delves me and heaps me, he shapes without fear,
he has me in his care, let him take care.”
V
“For he purrs in thankfulness when God tells him he’s a good cat. For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in compleat cat. For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.”
But let those who invest themselves in the dumb beast
go bankrupt gladly at the end of this investment,
for in answering dumb needs he is most eloquent,
but in sickness cannot ask help, and is often lost.
His smell reaches heaven, hope and faith are his fragrance.
Whether he camels his back or barks, he wears our harness,
he sits under our hearts through all his days, questionless.
His tail directs orchestras of joy at our presence.
For his nature he shivers his coat to cast off flies.
For his nature he hisses, or milks the cushion with his claws.
But he will follow our leg forever, he will give up his mouse,
he will lift up his witless face to answer our voice.
And when he burnishes our ankles or turns away from his breed
to sit beside ours, it may be that God reaches out of heaven
and pets him and tells him he’s good, for love has been given.
We live a long time, and God knows it is love we need.
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