If the city you created never showed you its back?
Never screamed a curse at you?
Never set an orange sign in front of your car?
Never pushed aside the anise and the cow parsnip
To stare at you with yellow eyes
And snarl: "Cyclops lives! This time you better get it right!"
Do you function like you used to?
Do you feel the same feelings?
Can you still see the leaves of the pin oak
The scattered evidence
Of a squirrel's game
The runes of sunlight
Spelling their riddles
Shifting and shifting
Until the prose becomes music
A fugue of guitars and organ
And you descend
Into the medieval past
Of your own childhood
When Europe was all, her forests,
Her commons,
Brought whole
With cradle
And sampler
And shuttles
Worn smooth--
To your cabin,
With its wasps in the walls,
Its old willow,
Its white winter sun.
And your school,
Don't forget, now,
Up there on the hill,
Remember the way?
And always the trees,
Offering dryness
When all was wet
Offering darkness
When all was light
Offering newness
When all was spent.
And even then you
Felt them--
Like deep music
Or powerful wine
Before you knew
What drunkenness was--
Before you knew
The terrible
Anesthetized dream
That adult drunkenness
Was.
And now what do they say,
Those beleagured giants?
Their promise is gone
But they offer more now,
In a way:
They offer proof.
