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of each upon the other resting:
two worlds at war we are,
star dancing against star.
For each must learn in each
all the dark-rooted language under speech:
PARTISAN REVIEW
here, look! new love, the roots we
did
not know,
strong stems, dark stains, rich glories never guessed:
disparate origins and desperate sins,
acknowledged or unacknowledged, understood
or misunderstood; the labyrinthine windings
through the lewd galleries of the mind, to find
something or nothing; illusory findings
which vanish at the touch, or on exposure to the air,
and of which only in default are we aware;
hatred derived from love, love from terror,
the roots now knowing their own fruits;
the unpracticed, and then the all-too-practiced vices,
deliberate dishonesties and rehearsed voices;
purpose becoming mean, meanness purpose,
wants promoted to obsessions, and the obsessions
near to madness. Who am I, who are you,
that one to the other must be true, untrue,
or dissect untrue from true?
Who shall possess, or be possessed? possession
of how much? and what ecstacy, or duration?
Where, too, and in what characters shall we meet,
playing what parts of the multitude we have played,
wearing what masks and scented costumes
on the strewn stage of habit? The attitudes
are predictable, and therefore false, they belong
to another situation, are the inheritance
of other loves and lusts. What beatitudes
can the winged god invoke from these? In what divine dance
instruct these stained and stinking puppets?
Out of such mouths, what song, what song?
And yet the tiger lily, under the snow,
