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| From the book Tristan and Isolde | | (1978-1982) |  |
| The Mill Hums | O happiness, you are the plainest of things
a simple crandle
you are a women crib
a fir-tree rocking
and if we fall
you will be our end.
Shining for me to this day,
as it does for anyone on this earth,
a radiant seam under a closed door.
O, life amounts to nothing
O, the mind hurts as much
as the heart.
A child weeps in the distance
and the mill hums.
Now a rough garment
of sound
and a fine bread dust.
The grain cries like a bird
beneath the hefty millstones.
And a solitary voice
alone, simple
talks with Vesper
the first star.
– O Lord my God
forgive me, forgive
and if you can
release my heart
so it might be
forgotten and good-for-nothing
required by nobody
descending a great staircase
into the expansive dark
so it discard life, like a golden sphere
invisible in the mind's eye.
A radiant seam beneath a closed door
which shines to this day, where one can disappear.
Tell me, my happiness
why live in the world?
To hear a child crying
and serve the stars.
And the stars themselves gaze down
from their caves or abysses:
it must be the Tsar's son
who also waits, and is alone.
He, like them, is alone.
And some strange power
like water under ice
stares through the spectral figures
which look down upon us
and the gaze, solitary
and plain
of this first and purest star. | | Gregory O'Brien and Jacob Edmond | |
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 | | The Mill Hums |
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