and I started again
with a smell, not yet a memory, earth beginning
   to drink from tiny roots in my head’s dark garden

N    ot a flower that flares and falters
I    s lost when the angel of night appears

White’s designed to fake an edifice,
but the matted crenellation of reed-thatch
throws it to the side. A squadron of crows
clarifies the rhythm, carries the eye through

As a kid I never thought of “pain” as
  something I felt. What I felt I could not
name or share. Now out the window I watch

The wind runs free across our plains,
The live sea beats forever at our beaches.
Man makes earth fertile, earth gives him flowers and fruits.

The only tall trees are on islands. Autumn
fires keep the land clear—The river
suddenly went slippery and jade. On its banks

A large room, with an upright harpsichord in one corner. A young lady was playing the instrument, whose face was heavily carved with cherubs and fruit. The young lady played a series of English folksongs and then slipped into Bach’s Passacagliain C minor.

Up in the mountains, deep gorges had split the rock into sharp knives. A whole civilization lived up there, where the sky was so blue it seemed to exist in depth for ever. Their cities (and I was never able to discover if, in fact, they had any) could not be seen. 

A watch. An old one used to hanging from the black silver satin pocket of a grandfather, swinging when he walked.

The children marvel at it and the adults are proud of it.