In the Canterbury Choir
How beautiful and long a face can stretch,
In competition with a sculpture on
A Norman pier, Modgiliani sketch,
Or long as a Tahitian mountain dawn.
Can lips assume this richest red, as warm
As classic bricks in hillside twilight, more
Effulgent, dreamed than Monticello’s form
When Jefferson conceived it? Like a door
Of noontime openness, those eyes invite
Ideas there in that blueprint like a stage
To raise the mind, support it like a bright
Gate built to clasp the world, outlast the age.
As silent as the arc of singing spheres,
This face holds thoughts in waters like wide weirs.