  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 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 Of spirit, fantasy, and intellect, Intent upon violating The tyrannies of formal reiteration. Men will revile you and bestow The necessary background. |
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