James Schuyler

 Royals

Called dog men,

they go out and have encounters.

Their blue eyes pick up and discharge

the green of their jackets, or ties.

Men, with clear-green eyes unnerve angels.

Or perhaps they are unnerving as angels.

It is certain they are not angels.

They maybe of another order,

between us and heaven like the atmosphere

between us and the sky, appointed

to clarify deathbed facts.

Unable to talk with us,

they know about us and argue about the facts

and the motives we may not know ourselves.

They arguing might be clarifying

to those who know them whom they do not know

as they know us who do not know them.

We see them of course,

talk with them and even touch then,

are struck by their glances.

We show them our secret, however ill-kept.

They tell us nothing about themselves.

They seem to tell everything,

what they are is obvious when we see them.

We accept as facts our conjectures about them

we were not aware we had made.

They help make real our conjectures.

They live in rooms around town

and perhaps are what we become for part of life

without knowing afterward.

This is no stranger than their rooms,

the inside of a cloud of red dust (it is, however, a room),

a room grown with lichens with a moon in it,

or wherever we pass them, or a roof.

(from Freely Espousing, 1969)