Rites for a Dead Magician

(TO HERBERT LINDENBERGER)

Tonight we stand by sea and heap
A holy hill of stone.
The fishes tremble quietly in sleep
Beyond. We form the cairn.

Maybe the lengthened shadow was a ruse
To lure him toward the dark
And drown him : nonetheless we lay our shoes
Aside and sit on rock.

Into his very body folded fire,
The smoky hair shone involute with light;
He quivered with a general desire
By day or night:

Daylight was like a swallow with a splayed
And broken wing. He spelled its parting ghost.
And underneath the wing of night he laid
His hand, and healed whatever wound it had
With ordinary dust.

He saw the mice emerge from balls of grass
To take the morning air;
He leaned above the small innocent face
And whispered in the ear.

Diviningly he scattered running words
Among the sleeping trees,
Called for the otherwise undreaming birds
To waken these
As inner wailings waken to the bards,
And roiling seas.

Do you believe the natural world will bear
To hear a summons thus,
Allow man's tiny lungs to shudder air,
Without the answering curse?

Tonight a swallow plunges down a yawning shade,
A hidden water whines
And claws the petrifaction of the world;
And, knowing these for signs,

I complicate my fingers in the fold
Of rock wherever I can reach,
My hand a starfish feeling in the cold
And eaten beach
To probe the sucking shadow for a hold;
But who will ditch the sea?

And now his body's pale medicinal flower
Feels in the crannied coral, blooming white;
Some of us amble forth to light the pyre,
Spirited stars outrace the slogging night,

Heavy daemonic feet withdraw down air
Behind the burning body on the rock.
Into his very body folds the fire
Of the white moon, into his very hair
The fog is weaving, involute with smoke.