Many are making love

Many are making love. Up above, the angels
in the unshaken ether and crystal of human longing
are braiding one another's hair, which is strawberry blond
and the texture of cold rivers. They glance
down from time to time at the awkward ecstasy -
it must look to them like featherless birds
splashing in the spring puddle of a bed . .

 I've been making my own
 truant discoveries in the
 poetry of Robert Hass.


 Well, I'm sorry to have
 taken so long, but I do
 report from time to time
 from David Ferry, so I'm 
 in no position to claim 
 I've not been looking out.

and the angels are desolate. They hate it. They shudder pathetically
like lithographs of Victorian beggars
with perfect features and alabaster skin hawking rags . .

Robert Hass
The Privilege of Being
  [fragments]
The Apple Trees
  at Olema
  New and Selected 
  Poems
Harper Collins, 2010©