Stone's Secret

 Otter-smooth boulder
lies under rolling
black river-water
stilled among frozen
hills and the still unbreathed
blizzards aloft;
silently, icily, is probed
stone's secret.

Out there—past trace
of eyes, past these
and those memorial skies
dotting back signals from
men's made mathematics (we
delineators of curves and time who are
                                      subject to these)—
out there, inaccessible
to grammar's language the
stones curve vastnesses,
cold or candescent
in the perceived
processional of space.

                                  The stones out there in the
                                  violet-black are part of a
                                  slow-motion fountain? or of a
                                  fireworks pin-wheel?
                                  i.e. breathed in and out as in
                                  cosmic lungs? or
                                  one-way as an eye looking?

What mathematicians must,
also the pert,
they will
as the dark river runs.

Word has arrived that
peace will brim up, will come
"like a river and the
glory...like a flowing stream."
So.
Some of all people will
wondering wait
until this very stone
utters.

– Margaret Avison