When I went up to Haworth there was peace
Between my teeth. An ordinary heart
Beat. My ordinary hands moved easily.

Crossing the land in a train, I passed through
the borderless townlets of sprawled New York
rising red brick out of nothing after

Through the veiled hush of the nut garden, God
was walking in the cool of the day; He
felt like talking again to a mortal

See how the god mounts her powerful back
and clasps the warrior thighs in his great loins,
smelling of dung and wild carrots. Rejoice

These good New Yorkers bent low over books
deserve a Paradise of softer chairs
and sleep, their heads against that fringed and white

She feared hell, loved heaven, and the angel’s tooth
that gnaws away the flesh with temperance—
think of this woman, who was half a saint,

Late in the century, Chaucer stretches
having just finished with his reckonings
in wool, checking them all against the chits

The poet sits quietly looking around.
Then galloping, galloping, galloping
out of his old age, into the sweet reply