That same Communion year, his light-
sequestering eye looked through a microscope.
Beheld (awe, and a lion’s roar)
a column of coal-black troopers gallop past,
Sudanese in their green jackets,
bound for the outskirts of Metz.
Saw and froze in memory’s vaults
the silent churn of dark clouds
piling over the North, wild as
Viking berserkers, huge as Asia.
***
At a railway siding fetched with bunting,
a lecture and demonstration (how far we French
have come since 1790 and the Field of Mars!)
Hungry for the descriptions of the hot air balloonists,
even the local skeptic being a sport
and posing a question which drew an ‘aah’
from the crowd and a smile and beret-doff
from the pilot. Yes, there was indeed
a magic line in the Indian Ocean,
blue on one side, green on the other,
with no transmutation through gray.
Another voice from the crowd asked:
will what you have done put mapmakers to shame?
Another smile, and then humility.
We are chimps as much as scientists,
picking fleas off of each other
and running from the winter rain.
***
At last he would come,
into the realm of the long-imagined.
Of all the lessons learned,
those catechumen afternoons,
which few would remain?
The immensity of the claims
and how quickly faith might be
toppled from its stilts.
At last he would come,
into a realm which mocked both
faith and hope, however obliquely pitched
the mockery.
And?
***
Love was the appropriate word for what he felt,
staring at the handwriting of foreigners,
doodling for leagues their unreadable urgencies,
their mild jokes, sumptuous misgivings,
vivid illiterate pornographies.
The salt of the Dead Sea, vast still waters
overtopping the valley of Siddim,
the nightmare cities of Sodom, Gomorrah,
Adama, Selvin, and Segor.
With the proper spell,
and soul committed to darkness,
a diver might sink like a stone,
down to rapturous torments.
The language of angels echoed in alleys,
beggars huddled together in public places,
to witness the sudden acts of cruelty,
the rarer miracle of love.