No Sweeter Song Poem by Daniel Brick

Who was that visitor yesterday, wearing
your emblematic clothes, speaking in your
voice, giving every sign that he understands
message, has taken it deeply within, into

the core of his being? His sudden arrival
blinded me. Is he to be trusted the way
I trust you, which is akin to greeting
summer's earliest dawns? The throat of

every songbird is poised with sound, but
they will sing no sweeter song than what
you sang in GABRIEL and A PERSIAN RAPTURE.
Yet cardinals fall silent in their sheltering

trees, then blue jays, robins, even sparrows
will join the same expectancy. And I myself,
ever awaiting my next poem, will still pause
in the deepest breath that I can hold, because

your voice may be carried by a breeze blowing
softly into the southern region, or a sudden
wind presaging rain, or a fiercer wind
remembering our primal desires...

I ask again, who was that yesterday man
I saw on the edge of light? And an answer
arises from deep within my Psyche: He is,
as Whitman envisioned, A ROUND FULL-ORB'D

EIDOLON... wandering freely abroad,
even as you are in the pathways of your mind.
What if he merges with you for a spell, adopts
language, becomes the prophet and the bard,

who sweep the present to the infinite future.
OR are the countrymen still in charge, still
IMMENSE IN PASSION, PULSE, AND POWER, and one
just returned from your presence tells us.

'Be watchful! Be Patient! He is with us still! '