In
scarlet livery stitched with gold
Ride the coachmen love has sold-
The doll may wither to our rage
Though we, enlarged, cannot conceal
Or multiply, grown huge with age :
Soldiers with wounds too large to heal,
Lovers with tears like suns or moons
In
which the doll-like image drowns.
As
giants to inhabit the margins
Not the world, our smallest gesture
Whelms and overthrows domains
We would but touch: miniature
Towers, battlements we cannot gain
Who loom above the inch-wide prison.
Not imagination but flesh itself
Is fed by these; mind, the poorest
Station, guarded by the doll of self,
Gates of irony by dogs of sawdust
Kept. The child, refused, will lie
Threadbare in the costumes we deny.
The heart, enormous, grows and grows
To cast a bean-stalk shadow over
This
small world; maimed, it knows
How huge those faults it cannot cover,
Being flesh and magnified-
How small the footsteps of its bride.
Behind the sun a compass will contract,
Inch by inch the world shrinks
Into a syllable of ice; so exact
The tiny map that an eyelash links
The continents; our own giant bones
Adrift like ship-wrecked skeletons.
Patricia Coombs
