THREE PORTRAITS

I

Withdraw your hair from the simulated

Interest of the moon;

Take every tenuous shadow

From the aimless tongues of these trees

And darken your speech until it attains

A fickle and fantastic

Acquaintance with the eccentric night;

Disarrange your dress and make it

A subtle invitation to nakedness.

Remove your shoes and stockings

So that your feet may enjoy

An embarrassed soliloquy with the grass;

Place the palm of your hand

Lightly against your nose,

Following the slope of some grotesque feeling.

Devise these careful affronts

To the heavier intentions

Of thought and emotion, and gratefully

Accept your title of minor poet.

Only trees with long roots caught by hills

Will recognize your importance.

II

They worship musical sound,

Protecting the breast of emotion.

Their feelings pose as fortune-tellers

And angle for coins from credulous thoughts.

Shall we abandon this luxury

Of mild mist and wild raptures?

Your face refrains from speaking yes

But your poised eyes roundly

Reward the luminous question.

Greece and Asia have exchanged

Problems upon your face,

And the fine poise of your head

Tries to catch their conversation.

Few people care to use

Thought as a musical instrument,

Bringing ingenious restraints to grief and joy,

But we, with clasped arms, will descend

Daringly upon this situation.

The full-blown confusion of life

Will detest our intrusion.

III

If you subtract a nose you add religion,

Supine, and in a glitter of explanation

Expanding the unreasonable second

Of chattering, pugnacious flesh.

The inquisitive elevation of noses

Does not fit into the smooth

Curvatures of faith.

If you remove the lips you add

Philosophy, for lips express the warm

Quarrel of emotions and become

Crimson antagonists to contemplation.

If you subtract the eyes you add

The fertile smugness of earth,

For eyes are rapid skeptics

Tossing light beyond the circles of earth.

Flesh will remain and vacillate

Between the cocaine of belief

And times of wakefulness

Designed to replenish the drug.

Then reconstruct the face

With shifting experiments

Of spirit, fantasy, and intellect,

Intent upon violating

The tyrannies of formal reiteration.

Men will revile you and bestow

The necessary background.