POSTSCRIPT

DARLING, darling, by narrow ambages Of fate, by gardens flowering with beasts, I came unto this place. The forest marches Behind the stalker, and the running grass Steps lightly over his defeated bones. This is the perilous way without return. In glassy prison now of contemplation I, fugitive from progress, leap erect In analytic dance on time’s acute And bitter needle. Crueler than a spine It penetrates the body till it pricks The bubbling brain, exploding life’s gray tumor Together with its iridescent world. I lost by winning, and I shall not win Again except by loss. The smoky past, Mixed with the wind, will not evaporate Into the color of air. Let life be false, But in our circular trap the blood remembers Its throbbing on the lip; the hands observe Communion, touching in the sleep of thought; And the punctual heart reiterates love’s name. Some little comfort I have found to think That, though this phœnix will not hatch an egg, Yet will its lyric history be saved In generations of its mental brood. And I have found some little comfort too In colloquy with death the quiet-eyed, Our profound and inexhaustible old father, Still loyal to his tall obedient sons. I have been social with the pale abstractions That congregate within a lethal room; But these strict walls encounter me; this house Exhales resentment of audacious hope. A man can starve upon the golden-sweet Impossible apples of Cézanne; a man Can eagerly consult a woman’s head (Picasso’s), but her slow and stupid eyes Drink light in vegetative apathy. O darling, a man can cry unto his love All night and day, and still be comfortless. The meaning of a mouth, a breast, is plain, But what you mean to me is dipped in blood And tangled like the bright threads of a dream.