"And God said 'Let us make man in our image and let him have dominion'...."
God made you in His image, yet I saw You stoop and seize a blind mole from the snare. Blind. Blind with terror ... Blind Your teeth gleamed bare behind the taut, white lips. The trapper's law knows neither hate nor love. You watched it paw, Frantic with lust of life, the yielding air And were amused. God's Image! Did you care, pitying one moment, see the swift hands claw For life and darkness, know and hate your trap? I saw your knuckles gleam, your hand swing free; A cry; The blind face crashed against the wall. Then death and stillness and---- You grinned. Mayhap, Snaring the blind mole of humanity, God made you in His image after all.
Lovely Semiramis Closes her slanting eyes: Dead is she long ago, From her fan sliding slow Parrot-bright fire's feathers Gilded as June weathers, Plumes like the greenest grass Twinkle down; as they pass Through the green glooms in Hell, Fruits with a tuneful smell-- Grapes like an emerald rain Where the full moon has lain, Greengages bright as grass, Melons as cold as glass Piled on each gilded booth Feel their cheeks growing smooth; Apes in plumed head-dresses Whence the bright heat hisses, Nubian faces sly, Pursing mouth, slanting eye, Feel the Arabian Winds floating from that fan: See how each gilded face Paler grows, nods apace: "Oh, the fan's blowing Cold winds.... It is snowing!"
Across the fields as green as spinach, Cropped as close as Time to Greenwich,
Stands a high house; if at all, Spring comes like a Paisley shawl--
Patternings meticulous And youthfully ridiculous.
In each room the yellow sun Shakes like a canary, run
On run, roulade, and watery trill-- Yellow, meaningless, and shrill.
Face as white as any clock's, Cased in parsley-dark curled locks--
All day long you sit and sew, Stitch life down for fear it grow,
Stitch life down for fear we guess At the hidden ugliness.
Dusty voice that throbs with heat, Hoping with your steel-thin beat
To put stitches in my mind, Make it tidy, make it kind,
You shall not: I'll keep it free Though you turn earth, sky and sea
To a patchwork quilt to keep Your mind snug and warm in sleep!
Metallic waves of people jar Through crackling green toward the bar