to make the wandering planets run set the easel, take the pen begin today begin again In dead winter the single oak thrusting dark roots into the sky, like Wesley’s father pleading with God for his boy’s soul in the burning house and the neighbour’s arms awaiting his fall. Adam beforehand walked with Eve in the poem of the world breathed and spoken, themselves figures in the painted landscape breathing and speaking. On our own pagan planet, where words fail much of the time, disasters occur, and the evening breeze no longer carries the voice of God walking in the garden, the peace is broken. To read and awake the corrupt poetry of the real requires fear, and a kind of holiness, no less, and absolute meekness, being dead. Audible footsteps, internal rhymes bind words beyond grammar into another language, and show one all things slowly coming together. Reality is the poem’s external rhyme. The world takes root, or not, out there. Now, all the world wants is to be well seen and said.

12