Horae Canonicae: Prime

Simultaneously, as soundlessly, Spontaneously, suddenly As, at the vaunt of the dawn, the kind Gates of the body fly open To its world beyond, the gates of the mind, The horn gate and the ivory gate Swing to, swing shut, instantaneously Quell the nocturnal rummage Of its rebellious fronde, ill-favored, Ill-natured and second-rate, Disenfranchised, widowed and orphaned By an historical mistake: Recalled from the shades to be a seeing being, From absence to be on display, Without a name or history I wake Between my body and the day. Holy this moment, wholly in the right, As, in complete obedience To the light's laconic outcry, next As a sheet, near as a wall, Out there as a mountain's poise of stone, The world is present, about, And I know that I am, here, not alone But with a world and rejoice Unvexed, for the will has still to claim This adjacent arm as my own, The memory to name me, resume Its routine of praise and blame And smiling to me is this instant while Still the day is intact, and I The Adam sinless in our beginning, Adam still previous to any act. I draw breath; this is of course to wish No matter what, to be wise, To be different, to die and the cost, No matter how, is Paradise Lost of course and myself owing a death: The eager ridge, the steady sea, The flat roofs of the fishing village Still asleep in its bunny, Though as fresh and sunny still are not friends But things to hand, this ready flesh No honest equal, but my accomplice now My assassin to be, and my name Stands for my historical share of care For a lying self-made city, Afraid of our living task, the dying Which the coming day will ask.