SUNDAY

Sunday,
And from the mountains' topmost trees
The crow's eye the village,

The houses are bright and white
As cubes of sugar,
The people in their black best,
Tiny as ants

Threading the grassways to the church.
The church is white as a bone.

The crows watch expectant,
While from all the empty houses
The white smokes puff

And the housewives, no matter what the weather,
Pack the stoves with wood,
And all morning, from the little chimneys

Come all the earth's clouds.

Today,
The preacher has much to say,
Goats, animals,
He has barely begun

When the women in the first pews
Rise in the air.
They float over their men
And when they take their hands,
Their husbands rise too.
It is happening again!

Row by row, they are going up.
What has he done?
A shadow falls over him.
His own wife is a cloud, floating by.
At last, at last,
He is going up.

One by one,
They float out the arched windows.

The crows fly away.
It is what they expected.
They rise so high
They reach the sun and circle it.

The women wear wide sleeves
And on the lawns, their shadows are angels.
The preacher is going up.
Why did he never see
The houses were toys?

The sky is a glass bell
And his black shoes strike it.

He rings like God's own bell.
The animals in the wood
Are altars of praise.

Why did he never hear them before?
He never wants to come down.
The women are used to it.
The swoop down and soar up.

It is his first Sunday.
It is twenty below
And his flock is warm.
It is twenty below,
And his flock is flying.