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A hidden dot in heaven’s misted blue –
That vault that’s depthless,
Arching from one far vista to horizon’s other –
And yet insisting on its presence,
Its song a tress
Of radiation that’s unquenchable
As upland streams, as swittering
From rock to rock in barbling freefall,
Scooting in lightfoot pleasaunce
Vertexly down scree and sprawl,
They seek a hearer open-mouthed impressed
By acrobatics’ twirling similes of song,
The skylark broadcast-sows its one and all:
"Avaunt you pigeon-chested knock-kneed males,
Come hither, yes hither, you ladies all,
Here’s a squire who fills his thong,
Eager to tup all summer long,
That, brood on brood,
My offspring like a Saxon horde
May claim the scrub and crop-rich fields
Of these chalk-boned and lazy-rolling wolds!"
An hour or more he hangs
And sings, the syrup-heat of summer, hued
And dense, lolling like ocean swells;
His wings in dashing flitter
Pump up his shout;
Like bells it pells, mells, wells, quells,
Skittles like shells, invokes like spells,
That none might guess
That ground-returned
He’s but a ball of drying mud,
Leaf-shred flecked and mongrel,
Belly-plump like a swelling downy bud,
His only brag his bristling crest,
Rising, sinking, rising, sinking,
As billiard-eyed he darts here-there,
Glancing, glaring, glancing:
How like the silly human, that crack-brained chest-thump chump,
Lard-bellied, trigger-fused concerned with “face”!
Take air, man, launch,
With weightless grace
Ascend the sun’s rich otherness,
Forgetting ground-stuck truths;
Think only of the lark as pure
Affectless being merged in thrilling blue,
A presence and a fons
Which sheerly gives beyond all mind or weal;
And as that lark which neither knows nor cares
But, winging, sings,
So, too, do you.
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© July/August 2021
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© July/August 2021
