In Season and Out of Season - Margaret Avison

Today the blueness burns
inbetween new greens and space's
soundless blackness.
Yet we even now
discern more, cry;
No, lovely as May is
we would hear more.

Moses, you are the voice
the Voice spoke with.
Centuries have not, will not,
still that, therefore. The marvel
of the pitched cradle of reeds, the appeal
to a ruler-murderer's daughter's
mothering heart, the barter
of true for foster care that became both;
your growing,
that unexceptional miracle
of years: it all made way for
what? One small pure drop --
anticipation? hope? -- hung on life's
strange leaf-edge; trembling in the light
for years, for all your years indeed,
for "By faith Moses...".* It is said.

Exult in warmth and depth
of branches here? Yes, and yet Antarctica
in this same season,
snarls, pounces, gnaws -- even while
today the earth
rejoices in deliverance in this zone.

Moses, your early privilege turned
when you saw abuse into
an alienating cause? What burned
was not the authorities' heartless
indignation, not
mute slaves', not
even your own
violent indignation, in the end.
Bare-soled on desert sand
you bowed,
you bartered with your seclusion for
your people's whole concern,
the Other's deep concern,
finally given to both.

For many days
here, a sagging cloud and stiff
dark mat of branch and twig,
clacking, entombed us all. Now that winter's over
the trees and shrubs are thimbleberried with
chestnut flowers, with deep-breathed lilacs.

Moses, how does your solitary death --
and you went up the lonely crags
as bidden --
follow? Did the Voice
seek silence then? from faith
were you led ... further?
It may be heaven is the
light that ... conceals?

Your longing then was
not so much to
realize the Land for you were
sure about the Land
long since by faith,
but to be brought
where the celestial Other would
be known in fullness
however dark?

He saw the Lord. He, Moses, was seen
transfigured too, in mountain light, when
much was made plain by once
caring enough to pray to be
blotted out.
(For he had stood among his
fractious protesting people; he
recognized too his own
moment of failure to
stand with the Voice, heeding instead
an unholy flare of
exasperated nature. Once. Enough.)

Not in season, in the revolving
solar system, in which we turn
changeably, always.
Not without the appalling
lightless depth. Not but as a way station
perhaps is the
unimaginable light where
all maybe is plain.