for Gerard Manley Hopkins
I saw a peregrine drift
to the weathervane of the church:
wedge of sky snagged on cross
of rusted copper
there was no ringing, no
golden glory hallowed
crowning—only the bird,
that one and no other,
who huddled against the human
spire, held hammered metal
as if to refute higher airs,
the burnished wind, clang
and carillon of cloud. How sound
seduces us into the sacred—
how we cleave, fail, fall.
Dear blind father dear Jesuit
this is the truth about heaven:
the living sky is feathered,
drab, finite. He likes to eat.
He rips, gouges, tears. Sparrows
fear him, feel heat shimmer
of regard—his hunger—hide.
But he’s only a little thing. He leans
into blank space. White
flashes under his wings, and they
are nothing like a child’s hands
raised in prayer, nothing
like thunder. Something unkind
to metaphor and music holds us
asunder, shears. He disappears.
