TOPSY-TURVY
I
If I insist that violets
Are intellectual eyes
Dotting with a wave of sight
The chained recalcitrance of earth,
Philosophers and scientists—
Blind boys who bolt themselves within a room—
Will seek to torture me
For the flashing witchcraft
That rides on thunderclaps
Called imagination.
The crystallized escape
Of fear is known as logic,
And men have used it to light
Small spaces in the wilderness of black.
But I prefer to mount
Huge horses of the wind,
Whose fantastic laughter
Separates to metaphors
And similes that hurl their decorations
Against the wide malevolence of space.
When I return to the morbid
Helplessness of earth
And shake off the dream of freedom,
Men ply their knives of gods
And creeds upon my skin.
Much traveling through space
Has made me immune to pain,
And metaphors and similes
Aid my counting of blood-drops,
Bringing color to mathematics.
II
Lady upon whose head
I weave the motives of this poem,
Change your sex to a barely visible
Trembling that can match the fluttering charm
Of the wreath that I have made for you.
When this task is finished
We may saunter gayly
Past the cunning niches
That psychology has made for us.