A poem for Lawrence

[Silas]

T.E.

I am pulled taught like a bowstring
over arid and empty plains that merge
within rolling apparitions of sand
condemned under a limitless horizon

and it drags me from my barren youth
of absurd and condescending
ostentation; pity for a ------- boy
who belonged nowhere and everywhere

the inexorable vehicle of the divine
which carries me from sheltering forests
into the comfort of scorched oblivion
and the iridescent tents of alien men

is the rescuing, spectral hand
that fulfills everything and nothing
and leaves me suspended like
Sycamore leaves on the twisting Nile