No More Learning

This is clear--
you fell on the downward slope,
you dragged a bruised thigh--you limped--
you clutched this larch.

Did your head, bent back,
search further--
clear through the green leaf-moss
of the larch branches?

Did you clutch,
stammer with short breath and gasp:
_wood-daemons grant life--
give life--I am almost lost. _

For some wood-daemon
has lightened your steps.
I can find no trace of you
in the larch-cones and the underbrush.




THE CONTEST



I

Your stature is modelled
with straight tool-edge:
you are chiselled like rocks
that are eaten into by the sea.

With the turn and grasp of your wrist
and the chords' stretch,
there is a glint like worn brass.

The ridge of your breast is taut,
and under each the shadow is sharp,
and between the clenched muscles
of your slender hips.

From the circle of your cropped hair
there is light,
and about your male torse
and the foot-arch and the straight ankle.


II

You stand rigid and mighty--
granite and the ore in rocks;
a great band clasps your forehead
and its heavy twists of gold.

You are white--a limb of cypress
bent under a weight of snow.

You are splendid,
your arms are fire;
you have entered the hill-straits--
a sea treads upon the hill-slopes.


III

Myrtle is about your head,
you have bent and caught the spray:
each leaf is sharp
against the lift and furrow
of your bound hair.

The narcissus has copied the arch
of your slight breast:
your feet are citron-flowers,
your knees, cut from white-ash,
your thighs are rock-cistus.

Your chin lifts straight
from the hollow of your curved throat.
Your shoulders are level--
they have melted rare silver
for their breadth.




SEA LILY


Reed,
slashed and torn
but doubly rich--
such great heads as yours
drift upon temple-steps,
but you are shattered
in the wind.

Myrtle-bark
is flecked from you,
scales are dashed
from your stem,
sand cuts your petal,
furrows it with hard edge,
like flint
on a bright stone.

Yet though the whole wind
slash at your bark,
you are lifted up,
aye--though it hiss
to cover you with froth.




THE WIND SLEEPERS


Whiter
than the crust
left by the tide,
we are stung by the hurled sand
and the broken shells.

We no longer sleep
in the wind--
we awoke and fled
through the city gate.

Tear--
tear us an altar,
tug at the cliff-boulders,
pile them with the rough stones--
we no longer
sleep in the wind,
propitiate us.

Chant in a wail
that never halts,
pace a circle and pay tribute
with a song.

When the roar of a dropped wave
breaks into it,
pour meted words
of sea-hawks and gulls
and sea-birds that cry
discords.




THE GIFT


Instead of pearls--a wrought clasp--
a bracelet--will you accept this?

You know the script--
you will start, wonder:
what is left, what phrase
after last night? This:

The world is yet unspoiled for you,
you wait, expectant--
you are like the children
who haunt your own steps
for chance bits--a comb
that may have slipped,
a gold tassel, unravelled,
plucked from your scarf,
twirled by your slight fingers
into the street--
a flower dropped.

Do not think me unaware,
I who have snatched at you
as the street-child clutched
at the seed-pearls you spilt
that hot day
when your necklace snapped.

Do not dream that I speak
as one defrauded of delight,
sick, shaken by each heart-beat
or paralyzed, stretched at length,
who gasps:
these ripe pears
are bitter to the taste,
this spiced wine, poison, corrupt.
I cannot walk--
who would walk?
Life is a scavenger's pit--I escape--
I only, rejecting it,
lying here on this couch.