BRATTLEBORO — A lonely, quiet boy, his spirit stirred
by music no one else on the farm could hear.
Evenings found him standing on the cliffs,
still listening, while the sea breeze stirred his hair.
The sky dimmed to its long summer twilight,
and seemed to shimmer, as if a breeze
disturbed translucent curtains at a window.
A moment later the curtains caught fire,
and the lights were dancing in the sky!
It was almost time for him to go;
he could feel his heart beat in his ears.
A young dragon perched on the edge of its nest,
drying its wings in the wind from the sea.
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Alone with his boat and old Ulf Thorsson's compass,
with the highest mountain behind between his shoulder blades
and one unmoving star above him all night long.
A homesick boy cried for his mother's home.
But when one day at last he came to land,
the boy was gone, and the Iceland fisherman saw
a smiling, straw-haired, red-faced dragon man.
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There came a muffled grumbling from the west,
a faint, but deep vibration from the ground,
and everyone looked up from the table to see
a boiling of black clouds above the hills,
a thunderstorm rolling off Ontario.
It's Henry Hudson's men, the pastor cried,
playing at tenpins in the glen. They laughed.
But Marting didn't laugh. He shook his head at Lottie.
It had flet to him, he said, as if some god
had beat upon the earth with a mighty hammer.
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His eyes, as I explain, stare at me, through me, past me,
as if my voice were coming from behind
my right shoulder. They see nothing. They look
for all the world like empty Wedgwood plates.