W a l k i n g   a t   A p r i l ' s   E n d i n g

The brightness of light, the clarities of air, were trembling
and shimmering when I walked at six in the morning.
My footsteps made echoes which only I heard
as if I were a figure from a wood-cut who choose to see
the world beyond the world he was carved in.
And it was all delight. Alone like an heir
inspecting the inheritance he had come into; the one favoured
to censure or approve the stunning shapes of morning,
confident and sure of the steps I was taking,
taking me away from yet leading me home.

And then, suddenly, there he was
(so early and therefore not expected),
who I first heard the noise of before I turned and located him in hazy air:
the balloonist, effortless and unperturbed in the sky
he seemed in sole possession of.
“You there, sailor of air” (I almost called aloud but did not)
“What, viewed from your basket under flame and air is your view of the world?
Are you nearer God’s radar eye than I?”
Yet one moment more and he was beyond me
as far from me as I was from him,
he in the air, the thrilling air, I on the marvellous earth.