Why should I care for love? But hush, oh hush!
What bird is singing in the dawn “Forget
The spring,” and, you,—have you forgotten, thrush?...
But love the thrush outsinging is falser yet.
Why should I care for love? Love does not care
Whether you care or do not care, says she!
But ask your lips how the rose smells in my hair,
If the thrush beats at my heart—here—Anthony!
MEDUSA.
IN your black hair are there not nightingales
Singing in the dark, and when you let it down
Is there no stir in the air of tiniest sails
That ever on lost seas of song were blown?
In your black hair the heart of Hyacinth
Laments the daylight he shall see no more,
And flowers are red as in the labyrinth
The red eyes of the crazy Minotaur.
In your black hair, Medusa, there are snakes
That twine themselves about Laocoon,
How soft, how warm! and how the poor heart breaks
Before they strike and turn it into stone.
THE JUNGLE.
TRUTH is the fourth dimension. By her grace
Motion, the idiot of time and space,
Grows reasonable, so that the spirit sees
Behind the aimless drag of categories
The moving centuries, whose gestures mirror
And dissipate the cloudy shapes of error.
O there’s the long way back, the dawns that scatter
Like startled birds about the spirit, and chatter
Of animal voices seeking lucid speech
In colonies of darkness. Truth can stretch,
Though motionless, and set a hatchet blazing
A path through the jungle where an ape is gazing
At the edge of a little light, with dripping muzzle,
Black writhing palms, and eyes a drowsy puzzle
Of fears and beastlike hopes. Then the light reaches
His pelt and holds him fast. In vain he snatches
At the sheltering trees, in vain the leafy dance
Down the long avenues of ignorance.
Knowledge and the pain of knowledge fly beside him,
And, where the leaves are darkest, clutch and ride him
Until he sloughs the shape of beast and can
Stand in the dawn upon his feet a man.
But the jungle is not cleared, and still the shapes
Of time and space and error move like apes.