…inter urinas et faeces nascimur.
—Saint Augustine


I. Serene — wary, not hurried


“Happiness have wings and wheels;
miseries are leaden legged,
and their whole employment is to clip
the wings and take off the wheels
of our chariots.
We determine, therefore, to be happy
and do all that we can, tho’ not
all that we would,”

said William Blake in Felpham, Sussex


And so there are
mysterious chariots chanting
charivaris and planting
haricots verts 
in the air
over Thomas Hariot’s Cheviot
potato patch


Everything should be
as simple as
it is,
but not
simpler,
agreed Professor 
Einstein, a stone’s throw
away in Chariot

Eight

II. In a comfortable motion


“like a fiend in a cloud,”
Death calls the tune,
plays out of tune and arrives
in a cloud

heard only by the catbird,
who sits in Death’s June sunshine
and sings the tune again

and again

and simply continues singing

black eye/blue sky!
black eye/blue sky!


III. Restful


“I live in a hole here,
but God has a beautiful mansion for me elsewhere.”


O grow
a Mountain in Fountain
Court


Sundown over
London


Kate Blake 
in black


IV. Very Comfortably


Saint Peter looks on in Heaven,
6 o’clock, Sunday, the 12th of August 1827:

“Lest you should not have heard
of the Death of Mr. Blake
I have written this to inform you…

—Just before he died His Countenance became fair—
His eyes Brighten’d and He burst out in Singing
of the things he Saw in Heaven. In truth He Died
like a Saint as a Person who was standing by Him
Observed…”


No music on earth
is there
that might ever compare
with ours