Waking in Foreign Mountains
It is like falling and not Being forced to break the fall (for some time hence), So like rising, This arousal, arising in a light Striking through large crystal-edged squares of thinner Glass in a strange land. Water-thin, O salubrious air! Or possibly it is like swimming: I am a fish out of water who gains Through exerting his gills Ability to survive, Learning to love survival as he strives. Accustomed, I gain water to swim in Buoying up theory, imaginary water As the ether of Victorian physicists Or the heavy-air ectoplasmic element Of a séance.
On the mahogany bureau, Directoire, The wavy varnished wood, Far: a clock, unheard, with Roman numerals Like straight strokes of hairs On an eggshell dial. It is late, Later than I believed or wished, but ever So early in my life, and where I am Empires and delectations Indicate not at all, though I am clocked In all the blazonings of circumstance.
Out the window above the high rim Of the surrounding mountains, forested and without Visible birds, a small free space of dimpling sky. Clouds may cover it soon, A rain fall on the fresh breath of the mountains; Then veils of rain lift, clouds lift In a once more dimpling sky. You are rising too, in the light Of our surviving love. The heat Induces a mutual yawn and we dress for a walk Like yesterday's, around the transparent Lake, under The breathtaking nearness of a mountain. Beside the green-scummed reeds at this shallow end We passed an inn, held hands, and took the air. And will take the air, watching The yellow leaves crackle and flake off onto The lower face of the mountains, as at home. On the upper face we see Already from our window The sprinkled snow slowly solidifying down.
We are not at home. We are here. Why? Between Easy answers to hard questions and hard Answers to questions easy on their face, However otherwise, we move in our own urgencies, Fully awake, whatever that may mean; May have meant To the count who built the castle, the monks' Foundation who inherited it And sold it to another nobleman till at last The Luciferian general bought it and used it rarely (He had so many) As a hunting lodge. He lost it in our war. Under the same mountains by the road To the lake, lie in a neatly mown mass grave His victims, under their own star. Does circumspection Defeat its own ends? We are charged With our own clear purposes, whose weight Does not disturb this country we belong to Only as visitors Whatever that may mean. We do not labor for life like the overcoated Woman with a switch driving cows by now In a nearby field Whatever that may mean Out in the nature that so gladdens us The happiest man would still blink his eyes; Nature, simply laid out for us, whatever Nature has ever meant.