Allen Tale
THE MAIMED MAN·
Didactic Laurel, loose your reasoning
l~f
Into my trembling hand; assert your blade
Against the Morning Star, enlightening Thief
Of that first Mother who returned the Maid.
Beguiling myrtle, shake no more my ear
With your green bough: because I am afraid
Of him who says I have no need to fear,
'
Return, Laurel! Dying sense has cast
Shadow on shadow of a metal tear
Around my
rim
of being. Teach me to fast
And pray, that I may know the motes that tease
Skittering sunbeams are dead shells at last.
Then, timeless Muse, reverse my time; unfreeze
All that I was in your congenial heat;
Tune me in recollection to appease
The hour when, as I sauntered down our street,
I saw a young man there, headless, whose hand
Hung limp; it dangled at his hidden feet
I could not see how, in the fading band
Of low light; nor did I feel alarm
But felt, under my eyelids, grains of sand.
As,
from their childhood, all men speak the charm
And secret double of night in wakeful day,
I thought that he could never do me harm
And gazed in stupor at the rusty play
Of light where once had stood the human head.
I thought what civil greeting I might say;
*
Part I of a poem of some length, now in progress.
