POEMS
.. MYTHOS
"Come, let us drown ourselves,
the world is asleep with evil;
we are evil in its embrace,
depicting death; let us out off our air
as a finish," and I sag
under the first impact of this whispering
in a voice toxic with its idea. Her arms
are tired arms, the veins stand out
as from hard work, and the voice suggests
the age of the weary whose fruit has been eaten.
In fright and simple surprise my head touches
the floor, my whole body borne heavily upon,
and at the first touch of this hard surface
my strength revives, at the idea of a surface.
From there down is the death being whispered.
My age of weariness is remote, my arms are fresh
as the young down upon them, my voice
a frightened one. I rise, partly from panic,
mostly from the impulse of which panic is the cry:
to live, to explore even weariness;
and my whole body sagging and withdrawn
begins to expand with its intake of terror,
the heart rapid, the chest quickly rising
and falling. The arms around me begin to fall
away. They cannot encircle what is beyond
their reach now, and the aged voice is silent.
Standing alone in my mounting ecstasy,
there is her shape watching me, the arms
at rest, sullenly hanging. But they cannot
rest for long, they have been trained
to
hold; the voice vibrates with its temptation,
but I cannot be surrounded, nor the voice
enter me, whose size has become the very room,
