Plays over the dry pods,
Runs fitfully along the stubble,
Moves over the field,
Without burning.
In such times, lacking a god,
I am stilI happy.
GULLIVER
Doll
is
doll and not unreal,
Arms, legs, all parts comply
To laws of artifice as well
As
those that advance the play,
Each flaw a measure by this scale;
Mind, consenting, serves the actual.
No larger than a span, each detail
Magnified, contracted to an inch:
A ship no bigger than a thumb-nail,
A thread for rope around the winch
And for a map our own disparity,
Sets sail upon a mirrored sea.
Doll and ship are thereby real, since
What but love constricts the image
And circumscribes all variance?
A compass used that we may gauge
Theodore Roethke
Our movements to and from the center–
This door we guard, too large to enter.
Against such habitual task and need
Grows the bean-stalk leisure of the mad:
Not ship, doll, fever, but the seed
Of
final silence in the shortened bed.
