Graves and waves are signified by rows,
as is the precedence in church of people,
while there is painted grammar in the rose,
that’s juxtaposed against the taming steeple;
one has the cosmos for pulsating rays,
makes chords for sequences by being triple,
that rise up through the hours of our days,
whose distant visages let out a ripple;
the other’s pains painted with elaborate stipple,
both finite and elect, and giving pause
to dignity and cause among the living,
who of its grammar make an unforgiving,
a word like weynted, weighted with its flaws,
and draws a circle round the wanted nipple.

* * *

Brown Hours

To start, a stained glass window holds the time
as centric as a compass point, sublime,
supreme the den of unified religion
holds fluttering still and silence phrygian;
the public emanates from private order.
Brown rituals of inward contemplation
lend service to the optimal equation,
and beauty is as much as we have thought her.
[The man who’s civilized must have a daughter.]
The tomes accumulate their docent zeal
for architecture, public works, the real
that passes just outside the private railing.
The unities accept each minor failing
as works of God. The scheme of inner thought
publicly realized, but in private bought.

* * *

Supreme the snows make compacts of our youth,
in worlds of gothic walls and stained glass mansions,
both shielding and initiating truth,
the embryo of civilized expansions.
The silver skate, a focus for the foot,
as well as for the rich, obedient daughter,
rings bells for triumph posited at root,
despite the winter’s snow blown spray of laughter.
How then the father walks the imminent bride
in moonlight, with the other guests inside,
shall give kind warning of such obligations
as money lends to higher social stations,
spreading old news of fabled Indian chiefs
whose prodigalities bred unkind griefs.

Ben Mazer’s most recent collection of poems is New Poems (Pen & Anvil). He is the Editor of the Battersea Review.