[The pentatonic spring washes its winter clothes]

--Jay Wright

The pentatonic spring washes its winter clothes.

Five is a difficult color—

not this green of reflected sky, nor the red

clamor of midnight riding by on a church bell.

Think of the Greek of it,

an Egyptian river,

the dry desert voice you hear in the cleansing.

All before this moment found its own measure,

an ingenious inganno, a blessure

occasioned by a consonant's turmoil,

a Germanic algebra brightly a-boil

through all the strings, a fortspinning always pure,

always a public shrine to a wood secure

in its origin.

                            White is a difficult

sound in the edowa above the tumult

fastened to the soul of widows, magnitude

that arms the darkest nebula. The rude

dead awaken to another baptism.