Major Men: Gerard Manley Hopkins

haecceitas

for Gerard Manley Hopkins

In double exposures of the uncreated light
the copula of a still growing eye
stalled the rhyming sinews oftening
in the one crew of your species,
alliterations of Christ's prismatic whorl,
frequencies light thrilled—
groins of words,
vermilioned etymologies—
the sacristy
swept by brooms and snow,
juiced
by sprays of trees,
an assonance of pigeons,
fluting cascades of grace,
falcons' achievements,
the time-lapse rhythm of Northern Lights,
selved the pantomime of manshapes,
and though the pied became a thatness
you could not remint,
still you were so happy.