DENIS DONOGHUE 33
IX.
I
QUOTE THE OPENING
of the second poem:
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds
to
oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It
is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown,
to
contemplation, in a white gown.
Exegesis is not required, though it may be supplied by reference to the
Purgatorio,
Grimm's fairy-tales "The Juniper" and "The Singing Bone,"
the Book of Ezekiel, and other sources. These allusions have force-to
cite R. P. Blackmur-as "a constant reminder of the presence of the bar–
baric, of other and partial creations within our own creation." But we
may have the reminder without the sources. Taken as it stands, the pas–
sage is like a tapestry of strangely imperturbable presences or a painting
by Delvaux. Kenner describes it as "dreamily static like an invention of
the Douanier Rousseau's." The lines have patience enough for local pre–
cisions-"the bones (which were already dry)"-but they don't find fur–
ther singularities necessary. Two lines have between them "because"
three times, rehearsing a motif from the opening poem: "Because I do
not hope to turn." The verbs stand remote from immediacy: "dissem–
bled," "proffer," "recovers," "withdrawn." It is poetry-as-music in
Davie's sense, because it pleases by the fidelity with which it follows a
"form of thought" through the speaker's mind but without defining that
thought. What we meet is a mind saying things, the saying and the
thinking being identical: it is a mind thinking rather than thoughts being
uttered. The poetry is also poetry-as-music in Langer's sense, because
