3359. 'THE BODY OF AN ANGEL, THE HEAD OF A GOD'

'THE BODY OF AN ANGEL, 

THE HEAD OF A GOD'

Many of the things I remember the most

have really no meaning at all. Anterior podes,

these things as arranged, they ring twice, they

ring steady. Between ('Thusly') the forces of

Nature, I stand unopposed. ('outside that

small town, we stopped, so beleaguered on

a cold, wintry night. All the shop-lights were

glistening upon the snow  -  yellowed reflections

on an iced-blazing white'). Where the bridge

crossed the shallow river, an old ruined warehouse

stood  -  it seemed a shambles and a wreck;

one thing alone, but many all together.

-

'For the body of an angel, the head of a

God'  -  the old parson was telling me that,

in Rutland, Vermont. I never knew what he

meant, yet now, I do suppose, I should have.

All that brazen church lust, so many these years

later, so makes sense : my thumbs were broken,

but always at the ready. ('The streetlight changed its

color  -  a yellow to a red  -  and what few cars there

were rolled to a stop. Everything seemed so ordered.')

-

In the frozen midnight air, the Proctor Marble Works

stood out : all the strange and awesome white stone,

cut into glazed blocks and ('now') slumbering like a

weird ice itself beneath a strangely straggling moon.

Off the fenceline, even in this midnight cold, I did

notice a few deer still grazed  -  how they had not 

bedded down instead, deep in a nearby woods, I'll

never know. ('And then from Proctor to Florence, to

the old Hubbardton Battlefield, I squandered on.').