Poem-a-Day

There is no rest for the mind 
in a small house. It moves, looking for God, 
with a mysterious eye fixed on the bed, 
into a cracked egg at breakfast, 
looking for glory in an arm-chair, 
or simply noting the facts of life 
in a fly asleep on the ceiling. 
The mind, sunk in quiet places, 
(like old heroes) sleeps no more, 
but walks abroad in a slouch hat 
performing adultery at violent street corners; 
then, trembling, returns, 
sadly directs its mysterious eye 
into a coffee-cup. There is no rest 
for there are many miles to walk in the small house, 
traveling past the same chairs, the same tables, 
the same glassy portraits on the walls, 
flowing into darkness.

There is no victory in the mind, 
but desperate valor, 
shattering the four walls, 
disintegrating human love, 
until the iron-lidded mysterious eye 
(lowered carefully with the frail body 
under churchyard gardens) 
stares upward, luminous, inevitable, 
piercing solar magnitudes 
on a fine morning.