Where is there a Lodge
Of Master Markers,
Who’s moon-body has surfed
Beyond the already-traversed marble?
Is it from the east?
Is it to the West?
Could it be farther South,
Or even closer north?
Could the albatross
Have already flown across,
Leaving the mariner’s quiver,
but only the motion of chilled skin?
This building,
A tabernacle to those who seek,
Is both verb and noun,
Word and sound.
‘Tis a corner-cutters’ dream,
That tent,
That rejected stone!
I may not mark it alone!
No longer a symbol,
Lost carving, or word,
The Master’s capstone
Has corners which point directions.
Where hath the path
been beaten to;
and who’s feet
have tamped-down that earth?
No master carves his own name;
No steel strikes against flint.
No building
Raises its own gables.
If the search
Is to build here and now,
than the ashes of the earth
are the edge of the town.