Horae Canonicae: Compline

Now, as desire and the things desired Cease to require attention, As, seizing its chance, the body escapes, Section by section, to join Plants in their chaster peace which is more To its real taste, now a day is its past, Its last deed and feeling in, should come The instant of recollection When the whole thing makes sense: it comes, but all I recall are doors banging, Two housewives scolding, an old man gobbling A child's wild look of envy, Actions, words, that could fit any tale, And I fail to see either plot Or meaning; I cannot remember A thing between noon and three. Nothing is with me now but a sound, A heart's rhythm, a sense of stars Leisurely walking around, and both Talk a language of motion I can measure but not read: maybe My heart is confessing her part In what happened to us from noon till three, That constellations indeed Sing of some hilarity beyond All liking and happening, But, knowing I neither know what they know Nor what I ought to know, scorning All vain fornications of fancy, Now let me, blessing them both For the sweetness of their cassations, Accept our separations. A stride from now will take me into dream, Leave me, without a status, Among its unwashed tribes of wishes Who have no dances and no jokes But a magic cult to propitiate What happens from noon till three, Odd rites which they hide from me - should I chance, Say, on youths in an oak-wood Insulting a white deer, bribes nor threats Will get them to blab - and then Past untruth is one step to nothing, For the end, for me as for cities, Is total absence: what comes to be Must go back into non-being For the sake of the equity, the rhythm Past measure or comprehending. Can poets (can men in television) Be saved? It is not easy To believe in unknowable justice Or pray in the name of a love Whose name one's forgotten: libera Me, libera C (dear C) And all poor s-o-b's who never Do anything properly, spare Us in the youngest day when all are Shaken awake, facts are facts, (And I shall know exactly what happened Today between noon and three) That we, too, may come to the picnic With nothing to hide, join the dance As it moves in perichoresis, Turns about the abiding tree.