36
PARTISAN REVIEW
As apples fall, without astronomy,
One of the sacraments between two breaths,
Magical only for the change they make.
The skeleton said, It is a question of
The naked man, the naked man as last
And tallest hero and plus gaudiest vir.
Consider how the speechless, invisible gods
Ruled us before, from over Asia, by
Our merest apprehension of their will.
There must be mercy in Asia and divine
Shadows of scholars bent upon their books,
Divine orations from lean sacristans
Of the good, speaking of good in the voice of men.
All men can speak of it in the voice of gods.
But to speak simply of good is like to love,
To equate the root-man and the super-man,
The root-man swarming, tortured by his mass,
The super-man friseured, possessing and possessed.
A little while of Terra Paradise
I dreamed, of autumn rivers, silvas green,
Of sanctimonious mountains high in snow,
But in that dream a heavy difference
Kept waking and a mournful sense sought out,
In vain, life's season or death's element.
Bastard chateaux and smoky demoiselles,
No more. I can build towers of my own,
There to behold, there to proclaim, the grace
