April is National Poetry Month! Conrad Aiken, "The Face"

Conrad Aiken
The Face

The blue shawl first, a canopy of blue,
blue sky, blue ceiling, the bewildering light
that comes and goes, and in it formless forms
and then the form of forms the shape of shapes
the darkness with the face, the face with eyes,
the face with stars, the leaning face, the murmur,

sweet food, sweet softness, incalculable depth
unassailable but protective height
the tower among the stars, great Igdrasil,
and so the sounds grown slower, more distinct,
one from another clear, the murmur shaking
deeply the chords of being, and the voice

speaking or singing, with notes far apart--
so far apart that terror folds his wings
between one syllable of sweetest sound
and its successor,--but so slow, so slow,
that terror downward, on delicious wings
floats,--falls in the darkness,--in the silence,--

then upward beats his wings, when the word sings,
is gone away, into the blue of heaven,
up to the shawl of stars--and here the instant voice
murmurs into the heart, into the throat,
till all the blood is radiant in the veins
whispers the secret the lost secret, far away

and it is bird song, it is boughs of trees,
the flight of light among palmetto leaves,
the wave of wind across the fields of daisies,
the voice of water fluctuant in the night,
and the street-vendor, the old negress, singing
'yea prawns, yea okras,' in the bright blue morning--

and then the face withdrawn, farther withdrawn,
into the sunset red behind the lighthouse,
beyond the river's mouth, beyond the marsh,
far out at sea, or stars between two clouds,
farther and farther, till it lives again
only in nearer things--and it is now

the sunlight on the hand and on cold grass,
the acorn cup half filled with rain, the locust
unfolding irised wings of isinglass
the hummingbird above the flower's mouth
on an invisible cord of purest gold--
wing shadows on the wall of an old house--

and now in speed recaptured, now in strength,
and now in word dissembled, or half seen,
as when strange syllables with sudden brightness
open dark eyes, and all the page of words
becomes a field of flowers, moving and fragrant,
clover and tulip in deep grass and leaves--

all stirred and stirring in a wind from somewhere
far off and half-remembered--from that sky,
that ceiling, that bewildering light, that shawl
of stars from which the voice of voices came;
then lost once more, and half seen farther on,
glimpsed in the lightning, heard in a peal of thunder--

diffused, and more diffused, till music speaks
under a hundred lights, with violins,
soft horns, nostalgic oboes, where again
the terror comes between one sound and other,
floats,--falls in the darkness,--in the silence,--
then upward beats his wings when the voice sings--

and it is life, but it is also death,
it is the whisper of the always lost
but always known, it is the first and last
of heaven's light, the end and the beginning,
follows the moving memory like a shadow,
and only rests, at last, when that too comes to rest.