ever around the core the star horse goes:
trudging through sun-suds, winding its long coil
closer to something which intones its homing note.
but what we think is there has already gone:
our pulses knock to the beating of dead stars,
and only one stammering instant since
Basho's frog hit the water,
Pompeii's people cooked, mudwrapped,
and the BBC announced war -
comes the star horse plodding around again,
tightening its coil.
polishing your worm's egg, you repeat
that - despite the self-perfecting pattern -
poetry, cooked or not,
makes nothing that would not anyway
have happened, happen.
i counter: the past
will never keep still long enough
for history - only for poetry.
we give it burdens
any beast would stumble under.
to lose the mystery and name the view
is not the work. yet the star horse,
despite our broken offerings,
our bluff and blunder,
turns so often it cannot be out of true.
