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FAIRE FAIRE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: It comes from eternity
Subject(s): Absence; Time; Separation; Isolation


It comes from eternity,
from its depths, its planes,
the little gift called time,
and enters what is ours,
to be our time. The lamb
could see the panorama
from the hilltop, if it tried,
but like time, it looks down,
to see the past it ate.
Time sees only time.
(The closer, not the greater,
thing from which it's made.)
The brain, bred in darkness,
sends dark waves, and wind
that builds inside the gland
blows cold brain, knowing
nothing of the soul that still
contains them-time, wind,
brain, knowing nothing of
what made them. The April
stream will feel itself alive
compared to land, and thank
the moving sky, not the god
from whom the sky is made.
I tried to look around to find
the love from which I came,
but I was young, and looking
down, found your perfect
human face, and couldn't
see how mean it was,
how mean it grew in time,
squeezed of all eternity,
of depths, of planes, of eyes,
a barn whose subtle sink
runs an inch or two a year,
until its door is full of earth
and the wind cock pinned.

First published in The Kenyon Review, Volume 22 #2 Spring 2000.
www.kenyonreview.org/roth







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