I shall be splendidly and tensely young,
My heart being whole, my brain
Keen as a hawk's flight flung
Against my victim seen securely
From my austere Inane.
But when my limbs no more are mine,
My feet to walk, my hands to hold,
I shall be most supremely young.
Then shall my flawless songs be sung,
My brow be sealed with a proud sign:
When I am deaf and blind and fleshless,
I shall be most supremely young,
When I am old.
"I"
I shall slough my self as a snake its skin,
My white spots of virtue, my black spots of sin.
I shall abandon my sex, my brain,
My scheming for pleasure, escaping from pain.
I shall dig roots deep down and be
A weed or a reed, a flower, a tree.
I shall lose body and miry feet,
Float with the clouds and sway with the wheat.
I am a fool and foolisher than
Anything else that is not a man.
For of all the things that I see or feel,
The I-that-is-I is far the least real.
And only when I shall learn at the last
That a stream-bed pebble is far more vast
In the scale of Mind and its secret schemes
Than all my passion and blunders and dreams;
Then only that I that shall not be I
Shall play due part beneath sun and sky,
Ranked below sparrow, just above sod,
I shall take my place in the Self of God.
I KNOW NOT WHENCE MY POEMS COME
I know not why nor whence you come,
My poems. Only this I know.
You fall like petals failing down
Upon the dustbins of a town.
You fall like flakes of doubtful snow.
Like fairy flutes your musics flow.
You thunder like a madman's drum.
You falter on my worthless lips.
You give me grapes to press for wine.
Unasked, you bring me balm and spice,
You lead me into fields of kine,
With tinted dreams and anodyne.
You freeze my flesh with flames of ice.
You scorch my shrieking soul with whips.