Aunt Sallie's Song

The Master’s got a sack that he says he’s gonna fill.

He’s gonna to take it to the gin for a dollar bill. 

He says he’s gonna burn everything he doesn’t sell. 

Master, put me in that sack. I don’t wanna go to hell. 

The Master’s got a mule that will not pull a plow. 

He’s gonna take it to the barn, and trade it for a cow. 

He says he’s gonna burn everything he doesn’t sell. 

Master, let me drive that mule. I don’t wanna  go to hell. 

The Master’s got a river, where he kneels to take a drink.  

He’s gonna walk on water, where evil men will sink.

He says he’s gonna burn everything he doesn’t sell. 

Master, let me cross that river. I don’t wanna go to hell. 

The Master’s got a baby that’s as gentle as a lamb. 

He’s gonna ask the people “Who do you say I am?”

He says he’s gonna burn everything he doesn’t sell. 

Master, let me hold that baby. I don’t wanna go to hell.  

The Master’s got an army, and it’s marchin' from the sea.

 It’s comin' here in glory to fight for you and me. 

He says it’s gonna bring a final tribulation

The day of jubilee and the blood of our salvation. 

Come Dance With Me

Come dance with me when flowers bloom
And scent the air like French perfume
Through open windows in each room
And ripeness bids us both, “Consume.”

Come dance with me on evenings fair
I’ll bring you Chinese silks to wear
We’ll dance so close, the crowd will stare
As pleasure stirs the summer air.

Come dance with me in harvest time
Until the clocks of midnight chime
We’ll drink our tea with Persian lime
And bathe in silver light sublime.

Come dance with me in winters cold
I’ll bring you chests of Spanish gold
From towns where kings are bought and sold
And men grow rich before they’re old.

Come dance with me and wear my ring
Through all the seasons life will bring
Do not resist, lest love take wing
Release your gown. Undo the string.

Come dance with me and share my fate
Two happy hearts in happy state
Let’s lie beneath the garden gate
And there enjoy our joint estate.

Come dance with me, forget our trouble
Although the world’s reduced to rubble,
Foundations vanish like a bubble,
And fire consumes the barren stubble.

E pur si muove

Right now, in the imperfect probabilities of this moment

The surest thing that we possess is not stable

Even the past is not stationary; it moves with the present

The heretics of one generation become the heroes of the next

And little children learn what once would have cost a man his life.

Voices from the Necropolis

Nature is not cruel, just sometimes clumsy
Stumbling upon new possibilities
In the slow violence of geologic time.

The streets came first, familiar names on paper
Drawn broad and straight in squares
Like razor wounds on earth
Secure high ground near water
Where rivers the colors of rust and jade
Cut through the boneless crust of clay
An Eocene shore of warm and iceless seas
Lay bare the granite ribs of sinless worlds.

Where we could not build rivers, we built streets
Our marks upon the surface, the work of men
Blind with purpose you still misunderstand
The beauty you admire, the vows that you exchange
Was not our beauty and were not our vows
Even cruelty is redefined in time.

We built streets we thought too broad to burn
For a city that would burn at the end of our age.

We built because we had to
The deep necessity of our nature
What is art but knowledge in reserve
Perhaps never useful, but used nevertheless
More than instinct, less than revelation
Our precarious urge to disturb the surface of things.

On random days in summer, the heat could kill a man
The air was hot enough to make us believe
We could not breath, and we would never be happy again
The physics of temperature and humidity
Drove us to seek the cool spaces of our creation,
Shade trees, high ceilings and porches,
Where we tried to beg or steal or trade our happiness.

What is the soul that it is so easily troubled by a happiness that cannot last?
Something shocked and saddened by constant motion
When everything is crushed like water trapped in ice
The rain of restless storms, the clouds that block the sun
The sudden and unexpected chill of unforgiving seasons.

The ages end more quickly now
The transient world reforms itself
Unconstrained by the chemistry of the past.

Prologue

Why do you want to know something that can only make you miserable?
Do not mistake what is truly useful for what is merely true
Watch your diet, exercise, balance your checkbook
Enjoy the stained glass of churches and museums
Each luminous fragment of meaning arranged in painless beauty
Like shells scattered on a beach by a storm
Like the endless light of shattered stars 
Something made beautiful by one catastrophe after another.