LOOK DOWNWARD, ANGEL

 

 

            Proust was recalled by taste to a vanished world;

            for me, the past is opened up by thought

            of surfaces I’ve touched: the flow unfurled

            of dark road streaming North, of cobbles fraught

            with antecedent meanings, brasses sought

             in Europe – relics pressed by pilgrim feet.

 

            That flowers sprang where saints have walked, saints taught.

            On sounder grounds, the Natives call a weed

            “the white man’s footprint.”  In between, a cheat

            swore looking down became the new Argonaut.