THE BLOOMING OF SIGNIFICANCE
Whenas in silks the Department of Reviews
and Rebukes sends you its assessments
of your late performance, implex
with invective as a stick bug in a grass ball,
and unlike the false tangents of the dream dialectic
at play beneath the surface stream,
these stun us with an aptitude for pointed
shadows, fanciful descriptions and polyphonic
narrative, the prayer book’s rainbow-colored text —
turn the monstrous page of light to the blinding
sonnet addressed to Cyriack Skinner.
It will be through a dismal series
of sureties and half-sensed, fleeting
premonitions, tender and light
and blossoming among the apparitions,
through notional prospects, the uninhibited
wind, that we will fall back upon ourselves,
upon what seemed like meagre resources
but which now seems a quenching plenitude.
(continues)