Poem: ‘They Have Gained An Audience’

THEY HAVE GAINED AN AUDIENCE

with the divine. The plumbline is vertical
as the resulting verse, so that neither agony
nor ecstasy travel horizontally but curl and rise,
sweet smoke from the swung thurible. Perhaps

these are the only prophets left to us, still able
to loop the loose thread of heaven through earth’s
needle-eye, a tremendous feat because her heavy lid
cannot stay open, closes now even on a clear day.

I imagine a bird and the bird is language, the bird
encircles the head of the most high and does not
flinch or burn, does not hide itself in a cleft of rock
that the holy might pass by. It cannot land. The point
is that the bird approaches—the point is flight. We need

only send our winged words through the needle’s eye,
the poets tell me, as though it’s easy, as though handfuls
of heaven are there for anyone to pattern, Dante or
the old woman at the end of the street who drives out
alone to check her spring calves. And yet to see her
returning at dusk, you’d swear she has covenantal
rainbows on her face, in her white hair.

Image: Daniele Idini