Or else a well cultivated and fruitful valley,
But behind it unexplored fastnesses,
Gorges, precipices, and heights
Over which thunder clouds hang,
From which lightning falls,
Stirring up terrible shapes of prey
That slink about in the blackness.
The silence of him is terrifying
As if you sat before the sphinx.
The look of his eyes makes tubes of the air
Through which you are magnified and analyzed.
He needs nothing of you and wants nothing.
He is alone, but content,
Self-mastered and beyond friendship,
You could not hurt him.
If he would allow himself to have a friend
He could part from that friend forever
And in a moment be lost in wonder
Staring at a carved rooster on a doorstep,
Or at an Italian woman
Giving suck to a child
On a seat in Washington Square.
Soul enwrapped demi-urge
Walking the earth,
Stalking Life!
JOHN COWPER POWYS
Astronomer and biologist
And chemical analyst and microscopist,
Observer of men’s involuted shells
Where they conceal their hate and even their love
Under insipid ooze or nacreous stuff.
Tracer of criss-cross steps made when great hells
Kept lime as soft as wax
Which thereupon took the imprint of the air
From gnat-like wings of joy or shadowy care.
He makes hard secrets stand in the cul de sac’s
Entrance and face him till he lays all bare
That eyes hold or heart of blood contains,
And curious traits in diverse curious brains,
And starved desires in hearts and hopes forgot
Under the sifting ashes of one’s lot.
X-ray photographer who flashes
What’s in you out of you with sudden crashes
Of wit or oratory in a flood.
He samples and tests the book’s, also your blood.
Shows what you are and whence you came,
And who your kindred are, and what your flame
In heat and color is. Poet and wag,
Prophet, magician taking from a bag
Eggs, rabbits, silver globes; the old engram!
Scoffer with reverence, visioned, quick to damn,
Yet laugh at, looking keenly through the sham.
Confessing his own sins, devoid of shame.
He knows himself and laughs,
Or blames himself as he would others blame.
A naughty boy who kicks away the staff
Which poor decrepits walk by, nearly blind,
Then hurrying up with varied thought to find
Medicinal clay with which dim eyes to heal.
What is the human secret but Proteus’?
And who can catch the old man but his kind?
He was Poseidon’s herdsman, knew the streams
Of early being, sea-filled ponds and sluices,
Where life took birth through elemental dreams.
And Proteus glanced with lightning and divined
The cause of Bacchus’ madness. But at noon
He counted his sea-calves and ocean-sheep
On Carpathos where waters made a tune
Following the Orphic sun out of the deep—
Then in his cave he hid him, turned to sleep....
So runs our life to change! and who can catch
The Protean thought must watch,
And be adept at wrestling, in the chase.
And know the god whatever be his face,
Through roar of water where the porpoises
And extravagant dolphins play, in silences
Of noon or midnight. So John Cowper Powys
You stand before us gesturing, shoulder bent
A little like King Richard, frizzed of hair,
Rolling your eye for secrets, for the word.
The thresher of your mind is eloquent
With hulls and flakes of words, until at last
The kernel itself pops out, not long deferred....
Here is our wrestler then,
Hunter of secrets of creative souls.
Eluded he may be, he tries again.
His hand slips clutching at the irised shoals
Of rapturous thought. And at times his eyes
Are blinded by a light, or a disguise.
But finally both eye and hand
Obey the infallible senses’ brave command—
He catches Proteus then, and with a shout,
The god shouts too, and we who watch the bout
Join in the panic of their merriment!
NEW YEAR’S DAY
She was a woman who even as a child
Hungered for gifts with hunger passionate
And in her childhood made a hard fate
For a father who had failed and who was wild
With a kind of laughing despair,
That comes of having failed.
She had plain dresses, only a little strand
Of coral beads, and ribbons for her hair
Bestowed by grandmama. And on her hand
A ring of beads that maddened her and paled
Beside the gold rings other girls could show.
So she grew up out of this woe
Of wanting and not having things.
And round this nucleus of desire
Her nature wound itself into a spire,
As a vine climbs up and clings
Till it becomes the tree;
So she became all fire
For the world’s glittering glory.