Chris Agee
Blue Gentian
It shone in alpine tundra near the cable-car summit
Held by NATO. Such a deep dark blue, so sudden
And isolated, it made me think at once of being somewhere
Deep as love, as it came to me, then wonder if it was the same
As in D. H. Lawrence, a blue match-flame igniting
The paisley tussocks and mosses whorled by mushrooms
In some grain of high-energy inwardness. I took it
To check, in a field guide, if I had found the poetry of the real
Thing held tensile as dew’s quicksilver trembling
In the rare globe of its pronunciation. When we reached
the perimeter wire, the French guard watched us descend
Near the twisted deck of the meteorological station
Whose German founder’s lone Gothic gravestone lay below,
And where you could imagine it would be better than a hospital to die –
In so far as death might ring the curtain, at least, on one last
Moment of utter beauty. So that when we kept descending
The serpentine road where the transport rose
To pass us, into a sudden strange light from the western cloud-front,
That time stayed with me...
Page(s) 72
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