As I have moralized it
we rode through grey
December pastures
half-steamed windows
of our coach revealed
black against them here and there
mesquite, post oak, scrub cedar. I
nodding into Lear, as Kent
into wheels turning, kept the
season in the stocks.

Dead father, please come back!
I, too, would lead you by the hand—

Look there! cried the old mad king
closing Cordelia’s eye, a door
to tombs in Leicester whence he went
that day the rails beneath me throbbed
as though they were the joists of heaven.

There is a grief of old men, saturnine
as Texas winter towards the solstice—
my grief too, borne inward as the death of God.
The oldest have borne most, been comfortless
incapable; my grief to search for fathers I had wronged
by too much love.