The Great Carbuncle

We came over the moor-top

Through air streaming and green-lit,

Stone farms foundering in it,

Valleys of grass altering

In a light neither dawn

Nor nightfall, out hands, faces

Lucent as percelain, the earth's

Claim and weight gone out of them.

Some such transfiguring moved

The eight pilgrims towards its source—

Toward the great jewel: shown often,

Never given; hidden, yet

Simultaneously seen

On moor-top, at sea-bottom,

Knowable only by light

Other than noon, that moon, stars —-

The once-known way becoming

Wholly other, and ourselves

Estranged, changed, suspended where

Angels are rumored, clearly

Floating , among the floating

Tables and chairs. Gravity's

Lost in the lift and drift of

An easier element

Than earth, and there is nothing

So fine we cannot do it.

But nearing means distancing:

At the common homecoming

Light withdraws. Chairs, tables drop

Down: the body weighs like stone.