Jack o’ Lantern tall shouldered,
One eye set higher than the other,
Mouth cut like a scallop in a pie,
Aslant showing powerful teeth.
Swaying above the heads of others.
Jubilant with fixed eyes, scarcely sparkling.
Moving about rhythmically, exploding in laughter.
Touching fingers together back and forth,
Or toying with a handkerchief.
And the eyes burn like a flame at the end of a funnel.
And the ruddy face glows like a pumpkin
On Halloween!

Or else a gargoyle of bronze
Turning suddenly to life
And slipping suddenly down corners of stone
To eat you:
Full of questions, objections,
Distinctions, instances.
Contemptuous, ironical, remote,
Cloudy, irreverent, ferocious,
Fearless, grim, compassionate, yet hateful,
Old, yet young, wise but virginal.
To whom everything is new and strange:
Whence he stares and wonders,
Laughs, mocks, curses.
Disordered, yet with a passion for order
And classification—hence the habitual
Folding into squares of a handkerchief.

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!