| |
| OPENLY, yes, | |
| With the naturalness | |
| Of the hippopotamus or the alligator | |
| When it climbs out on the bank to experience the | |
| |
| Sun, I do these | 5 |
| Things which I do, which please | |
| No one but myself. Now I breathe and now I am sub- | |
| Merged; the blemishes stand up and shout when the object | |
| |
| In view was a | |
| Renaissance; shall I say | 10 |
| The contrary? The sediment of the river which | |
| Encrusts my joints, makes me very gray but I am used | |
| |
| To it, it may | |
| Remain there; do away | |
| With it and I am myself done away with, for the | 15 |
| Patina of circumstance can but enrich what was | |
| |
| There to begin | |
| With. This elephant skin | |
| Which I inhabit, fibred over like the shell of | |
| The coco-nut, this piece of black glass through which no light | 20 |
| |
| Can filter—cut | |
| Into checkers by rut | |
| Upon rut of unpreventable experience— | |
| It is a manual for the peanut-tongued and the | |
| |
| Hairy toed. Black | 25 |
| But beautiful, my back | |
| Is full of the history of power. Of power? What | |
| Is powerful and what is not? My soul shall never | |
| |
| Be cut into | |
| By a wooden spear; through- | 30 |
| Out childhood to the present time, the unity of | |
| Life and death has been expressed by the circumference | |
| |
| Described by my | |
| Trunk; nevertheless, I | |
| Perceive feats of strength to be inexplicable after | 35 |
| All; and I am on my guard; external poise, it | |
| |
| Has its centre | |
| Well nurtured—we know | |
| Where—in pride, but spiritual poise, it has its centre where? | |
| My ears are sensitized to more than the sound of | 40 |
| |
| The wind. I see | |
| And I hear, unlike the | |
| Wandlike body of which one hears so much, which was made | |
| To see and not to see; to hear and not to hear, | |
| |
| That tree trunk without | 45 |
| Roots, accustomed to shout | |
| Its own thoughts to itself like a shell, maintained intact | |
| By who knows what strange pressure of the atmosphere; that | |
| |
| Spiritual | |
| Brother to the coral | 50 |
| Plant, absorbed into which, the equable sapphire light | |
| Becomes a nebulous green. The I of each is to | |
| |
| The I of each, | |
| A kind of fretful speech | |
| Which sets a limit on itself; the elephant is? | 55 |
| Black earth preceded by a tendril? It is to that | |
| |
| Phenomenon | |
| The above formation, | |
| Translucent like the atmosphere—a cortex merely— | |
| That on which darts cannot strike decisively the first | 60 |
| |
| Time, a substance | |
| Needful as an instance | |
| Of the indestructibility of matter; it | |
| Has looked at the electricity and at the earth- | |
| |
| Quake and is still | 65 |
| Here; the name means thick. Will | |
| Depth be depth, thick skin be thick, to one who can see no | |
| Beautiful element of unreason under it? | |
| |
