692
PARTISAN REVIEW
Jacob when a-dying, asked
Joseph: Who are these? and blessed
both sons, the younger most, vexing Joseph. And
J'Oseph was vexing to some .
..
or as wise as Goethe:
Though white is
the colour of worship and of mourning, he
is not her:e to worship and he is too wise
to mourn,-a life prisoner but reconciled.
With trunk tucked up compactly--the elephant's
sign of defeat-he resisted, but is the child
of reason now. His straight trunk seems to say: when
what we hoped for came to nothing, we revived .
..
or as beguiling, as full of becoming propriety, as Beatrix Potter:
The fish-spine
'On firs, on
sombre trees
by the sea's
walls of wave-worn rock-have it; and
a moonbow and Bach's cheerful firmness
in a minor key.
It's an owl-and-a-pussy-
both-content
agreement.
Come, come. It's
mixed with wits;
it's not a graceful sadness.
It'~
resistance with bent head, like foxtail
millet's .
..
or as purely magical as Alban Berg:
Plagued by the nighting,ale
in the new leaves,
with its silence-
not its silence but its silences,
he says of it:
«It clothes me with a shirt of fire..
JJ
