Pentecost


Better a jungle in the head
Than rootless concrete.
Better to stand bewildered
By the fireflies’ crooked street;

Winter lamps do not show
Where the sidewalk is lost,
Nor can these tongues of snow
Speak for the Holy Ghost;

The self-increasing silence
Of words dropped from a roof
Points along iron railings,
Direction, in not proof.

But best is this night surf
With slow scriptures of sand,
That sends, not quite a seraph,
But a late cormorant,

Whose fading cry propels
Through phosphorescent shoal
What, in my childhood gospels,
Used to be called the Soul.


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Pentecost