Nathalia Crane

Across the downs a hummingbird Came dipping through the bowers, He pivoted on emptiness To scrutinize the flowers.

A thousand ardent oilers swung the long spout 'twixt their nods, And tried to glimpse a meaning in the challenge of the gods. And then one night there landed on a Mineola swale A plane that looked like pewter, with a carrier of mail. Its wings were tinged like tea-box skins, each truss of shadow gray, Its cabin but an alcove slung beneath a metal ray. The Spirit of St. Louis was inscribed upon the lee; It came from out a province that had never seen the sea.

Lo and behold! God made this
starry wold,
The maggot and the mold; lo and
behold!
He taught the grass contentment
blade by blade,
The sanctity of sameness in a shade.

You cannot choose your battlefield,
God does that for you;
But you can plant a standard
Where a standard never flew.

(From The Colors)

The sign work of the Orient it runneth up and down; The Talmud stalks from right to left, a rabbi in a gown; The Roman rolls from left to right from Maytime unto May; But the gods shake up their symbols in an absent-minded way. Their language runs to circles like the language of the eyes, Emphasised by strange dilations with little panting sighs.

The sun shall shine in ages yet to be, The musing moon illumine pastures dim, And afterwards a new nativity For all who slept the dreamless interim.

Oh I'm in love with the janitor's boy, And the janitor's boy loves me; He's going to hunt for a desert isle In our geography.

A precious place is Paradise and none may know its worth, But Eden ever longeth for the knicknacks of the earth. The angels grow quite wistful over worldly things below; They hear the hurdy-gurdies in the Candle Makers Row. They listen for the laughter from the antics of the earth; They lower pails from heaven's walls to catch the milk-maids mirth.

The rose has told
In one simplicity
That never life
Relinquishes a bloom
But to bestow
An ancient confidence.

Let go the lure The striving to unmake; Behold the truth Whenever heart may ache There is a glory In a great mistake.

The gods released a vision on a world forespent and dull; They sent it as a challenge by the sea hawk and the gull. It roused the Norman eagerness, the Albion cliffs turned red: "You fly the wings of logic — can you fly the wings of lead?

When you return, the youngest of the seers, Released from fetters of ancestral pose, There will be beauty waiting down the years — Revisions of the ruby and the rose.

Finally she faltered; Saw at last, forsooth, Every gaudy color Is a bit of truth. Then the gates were opened; Miracles were seen; That instructed damsel Donned a gown of green; Wore it in a churchyard, All arrayed with care; And a painted rainbow Shone above her there.

I linger on the flathouse roof, the moonlight is divine. But my heart is all aflutter like the washing on the line.

Great is the rose That challenges the crypt, And quotes milleniums Against the grave.