The music brought us what it seemed
We had long desired, but in a form
So rarefied there was no emptiness
Of sensation, as if pleasure
Might persist, like a dear friend
Walking toward one in a dream.
It was the toothless murmuring
Of ancient willows, who kept their trouble
In a stage of music. Without tumult
Snow-capped mountains and heart-shaped
Cathedral windows were contained
There, until only infinity
Remained of beauty. Then lighter than the air
We rose and packed the picnic basket.
But there is beside us, they said,
Whom we do not sustain, the world
Of things, that rages like a virgin
Next to our silken thoughts. It can
Be touched, they said. It cannot harm.
But suddenly their green sides
Foundered, as if the virgin beat
Their airy trellis from within.
Over her furious sighs, a new
Music, innocent and monstrous
As the ocean’s bright display of teeth
Fell on the jousting willows. We
Are sick, they said. It is a warning
We were not meant to understand.
II.
The mythological poet, his face
Fabulous and fastidious, accepts
Beauty before it arrives. The heavenly
Moment in the heaviness of arrival
Deplores him. He is merely
An ornament, a kind of lewd
Cloud placed on the horizon.
Close to the zoo, acquiescing
To dust, candy, perverts; inserted in
The panting forest, or openly
Walking in the great and sullen square
He has eloped with all music
And does not care. For isn’t there,
He says, a final diversion, greater
Because it can be given, a gift
Too simple even to be despised?
And oh beside the roaring
Centurion of the lion’s hunger
Might not child and pervert
Join hands, in the instant
Of their interest, in the shadow
Of a million boats; their hunger
From loss grown merely a gesture?