The Hero
Where there is personal liking we go.
Where the ground is sour; where there are
weeds of beanstalk height,
snakes' hypodermic teeth, or
the wind brings the "scarebabe voice:
from the neglected yew set with
the semi-precious cat's eyes of the owl -
awake, asleep, "raised ears extended to fine points," and so
on - love won't grow.
We do not like some things, and the hero
doesn't; deviating head-stones
and uncertainty;
going where one does not wish
to go; suffering and not
saying so; standing and listening where something
is hiding. The hero shrinks
as what it is flies out on muffled wings, with twin yellow
eyes - to and fro -
with quavering water-whistle note, low,
high, in basso-falsetto chirps
until the skin creeps.
Jacob when a-dying, asked
Joseph: Who are these? and blessed
both sons, the younger most, vexing Joseph. And
Joseph was vexing to some.
Cincinnatus was; Regulus; and some of our fellow
men have been, although devout,
like Pilgrim having to go slow,
to find his roll; tired but hopeful -
hope not being hope
until all ground for hope as
vanished; as lenient, looking
upon a fellow creature's error with the
feelings of a mother - a
woman or a cat. The decorous frock-coated Negro
by the grotto
answers the fearless sightseeing hobo
who asks the man she's with, what's this,
what's that, where's Martha
buried, "Gen'ral Washington
there; his lady here"; speaking
as if in a play - not seeing her; with a
sense of human dignity
and reverence for mystery, standing like the shadow
of the willow.
Moses would not be grandson to Pharaoh.
It is not what I eat that is
my natural meat,
the hero says. He's not out
seeing a sight but the rock
crystal thing to see - the startling El Greco
brimming with inner light - that
covets nothing that it has let go. This then you may know
as the hero.
No Swan So Fine
"No water so still as the
dead fountains of Versailles." No swan,
with swart blind look askance
and gondoliering legs, so fine
as the chintz china one with fawn-
brown eyes and toothed gold
collar on to show whose bird it was.
Lodged in the Louis Fifteenth
candelabrum-tree of cockscomb-
tinted buttons, dahlias,
sea-urchins, and everlastings,
it perches on the branching foam
of polished sculptured
flowers - at ease and tall. The king is dead.
