DEFINING EACH OTHER

IN SPACES OF HOLINESS.

Softly the old hand

rose and descended,

the harp-handling fingers

at rest on the brow

of the bold and mysterious boy.

The apprenticeship was sealed

in Orestes’s bravado,

the name of HIERONYMO

fixed to the terms of indenture,

all in the luck of an hour,

and depth of a season,

but somewhere within it

a darker invention

that sprawled in the depths

of the heart and the dwindling earth.