EDITH SITWELL'S BIRTHDAY

Her birthday is September

on the seventh day,
we marvel at Creation
and at Edith Sitwell's
party invitation for u

in the wave of her hand
from musical vibrations
as she reads her lyrical verse
summed up in an evocative
universe of undulation,
Edith never landlocked

in rooms or hallways
for those who visit this poet
from a thousand realms
of brides and grooms

to a world which opens
for all of us in England

on the sands of the sea
(like John at Patmos
on an island
where he is sees
as a visionary
a woman clothed
by revelations in the sun
and the twelfth of stars
in charismatic velocity)
near the shore
are wellspring boxes
of blueberries
by river beds of roses

which outlast like phlox
in a garden of rocks
as a phoenix rises,
Edith walks by

mirrors, corridors
from an English garden
to deliver these roses

we recall her
in a choir of love

in a memoir of verse

still hearing her invocation

on musical sharps and harps

in contented long passages

which trill and thrill

with remarkable Sitwell quatrains

(for Edith you always amuse us
even being serious

as would good Jesus
who was not understood
asks us to love and rejoice
in wonder
from his cross of wood
at the final thunder
of his reign
your vocal parallels

that of the bishops
in gospel chapter and verse)

from tercet villanelle
we can tell of Sitwell

giving us pleasure

of channeling words
by wishing wells
in your parlor
as gentlemen and  ladies
are set free
from Hades and Hell
by saucer dinner settings
trading in old England's dishes
of Shakespeare and Chaucer

to vetting our interiors
from London to Boston
sounding from the underground
wishing your arbitrary phrases 

will always be soulfully alive
invented as Edith resets
her area of poetry
fixing our masks
on wrong
which will survive
in our leisure to pick out
her legendary words
from our living libraries
and to ask for an asterisk

as a prize prick song
measure to measure
at our own pleasure.