THE FURIES

But you must act. And therein lies the way Of freedom from the Furies. You must burn The substance of your being, if you stay The impetus of life you will not learn The simples of salvation. Go pluck off A serpent from Alecto’s head and laugh Exhilarate with its poison. If you scoff You will perceive. You cannot love the staff You have not scorned. You cannot weigh the act You have not lived, the fear you did not prove. Your soul was made to focus and extract Through action every hatred, every love. Pour out yourself if you would know release From what the Furies do to spoil your peace.

Ambition that eludes, love never found High hopes that tempt, or goodness still pursued Have their own Furies, for this mortal ground Breeds serpents from the blood of fortitude And action as it does from listless fear. You have aspired and fallen, curse the past Till madness come! Be quiet, hide or sear The memory of the dream, no less at last The Sisters shall arrive! How do they come? Your life grows round a moral governance And you have served it. You are stricken dumb To see it crumble spite of vigilance. Now when you cannot think, rebuild, repair The Sisters come and wheel your cripple’s chair.

You were a fennel stalk that laughed and grew With laughter till the life in you could use The cells no further, then the cold winds blew, And you fell whispering of the April dews. Grown fair or foul the rhythmic force was spent, The summer gone, your little past achieved, Repulsions balanced, though you might lament So much neglected, or too much believed. You were a dry weed when a Great Hand seized And bore you as a carrier of fire. The garden you had grown in had not pleased! Was this, perhaps, the end of your desire? You lit a heap of leaves where children came, The Furies meditating watched the flame!