High above Uni's green surrounding fields,
a space once nursery, then a school room, yields
to second childhood.
Little chair and desk are gone.
Gone too the blackboards with Dantesque or Yeatsian systems.
Random colored blocks spell rat or man.
Above a shut toy box Robert's own full length self-portraits
hung, paintbrush hovering smocked in white.
A young sad clown.
The room is airless.
Unlit gauze, draperies, a tousled pink cord
draws erect limp ghost pyramid.
Within our friend lies as if sleeping, knees to chin.
Then the angelic intern of his dream
glides into semblance on one downward beam.
Oh, babe.
I, Michael, whose domain is light,
bring you the first of five gifts.
Sight.
In either hand he bears a sparkling orb of empire,
that we numbskull must absorb.
Now poet, hand decor.
A mirror, run, face it to your painted wall, turn on the sun.
We do.
The fresco springs to life.
Aha, child, landscapes, sea, and sky.
Are you ready?
Answer.
Aye.
Yes, you see.
Tell us.
Lord, these blear eyes look past two red knobs.
Your small unborn knees.
Ah, Lord.
Lord, not that, please.
Child, look long on it, your small, vital impediment.
Poor foot.
Child, that is your upward step.
Before you limped, now hobbled, you will leave next.
Lord, red liquid walls a trailing cord.
Child, your first cord.
And all this, Lord, against the painted scene
of where I am no longer and have not yet been?
Yes, child.
The second gift will be brought in upon the morrow by my twin.
Now, blessed ones, you three may speak of mortal things.
Our child can see.
He goes.
The nursery is once more a room, only we
can't make out the portraits' eyes, and Robert again himself.
Was this, we wonder, his first experience of the new womb?
Or my first sense of it, this whole long time my old soul
training here up to new tricks, a little unknown bard
was 266 days in residence.
Michael is sublime.
All this, both real and imaginary,
but on his first word, babe: A babe
I was, floating warm and languid.
Then on sight two stabbing red glows
shot into my head and there before me shone your scene,
and I was in that moment both unborn and born.
Go on.
What more?
I do go on.
Before next ceremonies will be sleepy.
[YAWN]
Poor little tyke.
Yes, yes, shut those new eyes.
Sirs, is Mr. Robert safe?
Isn't he in their hands?
He said, Uni, take me out riding later for I limp now.
Sad, sad, sad, and strange how such loss turns to profit.
We lost our proud ivory horn.
Oh, so you had horns, then?
The old ones did, twisted and long and useless.
Oh?
Yet legend says any spring you dipped your horn into
was cleansed of venom.
Well, we were of the white.