YOUTH AT THE BORDERLANDS
At summer solstice, half asleep he hears
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Drift the morning through the flung-high windows,
And all the drowsy blood in him awakes,
Begins to stir like linened Lazarus.
The dormant cells of him brighten like stars
Emerging in the vaulted tomb of night.
And how and what to be as man in spite
Of shatterings, in spite of bane and blade,
In spite of graces lost, in spite of us:
A fog of questions gnats his mind and steals
His peace away. He rises. Dew ascends,
Daybreak sun a host above a chalice
Of earth. All’s cloud, and Tallis in his ears.
