for Muriel Rukeyser

The kettle changes its note,
the steam sublimed.

Supererogatory divinations one is
lured on by!
                    The routine
is decent. As if the white page
were a clean tablecloth,
as if the vacuumed floor were
a primed canvas, as if
new earrings made from old shells
of tasty abalone were nose rings for the two most beautiful
girls of a meticulous island, whose bodies are oiled as one oils
a table of teak…Hypocrisies
of seemly hope, performed to make a place
for miracles to occur; and if the day
is no day for miracles, then the preparations
are an order one may rest in.

                                              But one doesn’t want
rest, one wants miracles. Each time that note
changes (which is whenever you let it!)— the kettle
(already boiling) passing into enlightenment without
a moment’s pause, out of fury into
quiet praise—desire
wakes again. Begin over.

                It is to hunt a white deer
                in snowy woods. Beaten
                you fall asleep in the afternoon
on a sofa.
                And wake to witness,
softly backing away from you, mollified,
all that the room had insisted on—
                           eager furniture, differentiated planes…
Twilight has come, the windows
are big and solemn, brimful of the afterglow;
and sleep has swept through the mind, loosening
brown leaves from their twigs to drift
                                                 out of sight
beyond the horizon’s black rooftops.
A winter’s dirt
makes Indian silk squares of the windowpanes,
seem transparent, a designed
middle distance.
                             The awakening is 
to transformation,
word after word.