Sext: Gregor Mendel and the Bells

Forbidden, 
our two-stroke bells of mourning, 
our cholera bells of mourning, 
the toll of their tolling fearsome, 
we are told, the toll of their tolling 
despondency. 
      Holy Father, all day 
sepals have slipped 
to the glasshouse floor, 
wing petals, keel petals, while in 
through the orchard's Aeolian harp 
your breath has offered 
its consolation: not upstrokes, 
not backstrokes—the bell's twinned rings— 
but a thousand thousand 
chime-shards, their singular 
cacophony. 
      Hour by hour, 
through the buffed Aeolian harp … 
and forgive me, my God, 
if I find in your influx 
no patterning, as I find 
in these downfalls no fixed design. 
All day on the greenhouse floor: 
anther, pollen, sepal, standard, 
stigma, stigma, wing.