The Man Against the Sky
Part 10: Eros Turannos

She fears him, and will always ask
What fated her to choose him;
She meets in his engaging mask
All reasons to refuse him;
But what she meets and what she fears
Are less than are the downward years,
Drawn slowly to the foamless weirs
Of age, were she to lose him.

Between a blurred sagacity
That once had power to sound him,
And Love, that will not let him be
The Judas that she found him,
Her pride assuages her almost,
As if it were alone the cost.—
He sees that he will not be lost,
And waits and looks around him.

A sense of ocean and old trees
Envelops and allures him;
Tradition, touching all he sees,
Beguiles and reassures him;
And all her doubts of what he says
Are dimmed with what she knows of days—
Till even prejudice delays
And fades, and she secures him.

The falling leaf inaugurates
The reign of her confusion;
The pounding wave reverberates
The dirge of her illusion;
And home, where passion lived and died,
Becomes a place where she can hide,
While all the town and harbor side
Vibrate with her seclusion.

We tell you, tapping on our brows,
The story as it should be,—
As if the story of a house
Were told, or ever could be;
We’ll have no kindly veil between
Her visions and those we have seen,—
As if we guessed what hers have been,
Or what they are or would be.

Meanwhile we do no harm; for they
That with a god have striven,
Not hearing much of what we say,
Take what the god has given;
Though like waves breaking it may be,
Or like a changed familiar tree,
Or like a stairway to the sea
Where down the blind are driven.

-- Edwin Arlington Robinson

Kushner and Nichols - Angels in America

Who Is to Be Considered Daughter but Wisdom?

She's come. — Suddenly this room where I sit
feels emptier than before. If I look up
now I will see her standing in the open door
gazing in toward me with her question.
And I am less because she's here, not more.

It is as when on a summer afternoon
raindrops begin to fall in utter silence
onto a still pond. And a canoeist out there
lifts up his eyes and sees, looking at
the water, how water is falling into water.

A new solitude, until that moment
not known — it is the empty universe
of her voice — passes into my heart
like water vanishing into water. She says,
"When you have returned to the shore, canoeist,

and are rested from your journey, remember me.
Among the histories of rain I linger to hear.
I linger to hear your answer to my question:
How do you merit to live so long?"
Then I say to her: "Dilectissima, it is as when

the sky darkens imperceptibly and a wind
moves slowly, as great things do, high up in
trees at the shore, not yet touching the surface
of the still pond. And then one raindrop falls
on the still water, without sound, and makes a circle.

First one drop falls and makes a circle. Then
another, at a distance. The first circle is
larger than the second, at the moment of
the appearance of the second, and lingers.
Then the pond is stricken by a third raindrop.

The second circle grows large. But the first
raindrop of the rain shower has disappeared.
A big wind descends upon the pond.
Time is told telling of our lives, each one
appearing and disappearing." Once more

I hear her question or is it the wind.
"But how do you merit to live so long?"
— And then she vanishes, water into water,
turning from the door. Once more I sit
alone, but taught as by a daughter . . .

-- Allen Grossman
from >Words Taken to Heart: Four Answers to
One Question



x

Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae

I am not as I was under the reign of the good Cynara.
      -- Horace

Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,
Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;
Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
When I awoke and found the dawn was gray:
I have been faithful to you, Cynara! in my fashion.

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long;
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

-- E. Dawson

        In November days,
When vapours, rolling down the valleys, made
A lonely scene more lonesome; among woods
At noon, and amid the calm of summer nights,
When, by the margin of the trembling Lake,
Beneath the gloomy hills I homeward went
In solitude, such intercourse was mine;
'Twas mine among the fields both day and night,
And by the waters all the summer long.

Wordsworth, "The Prelude"