A Grain of Mustard Seed Read Online Free

A Grain of Mustard Seed
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    Toward an ordering of the spirit in pure air
    Where no one is bound by custom, or so engined
    Toward immediate goals, and trapped by time:
    Your poems will happen when no one is there.
    And when the angel comes, you will remember
    Our fierce encounter, beyond devious ways,
    Not at the end of some blank corridor—
    Outside all walls, the daring spirit’s wrench
    To open up a simple world of praise!

Girl With ’Cello
    There had been no such music here until
    A girl came in from falling dark and snow
    To bring into this house her glowing ’cello
    As if some silent, magic animal.
    She sat, head bent, her long hair all a-spill
    Over the breathing wood, and drew the bow.
    There had been no such music here until
    A girl came in from falling dark and snow.
    And she drew out that sound so like a wail,
    A rich dark suffering joy, as if to show
    All that a wrist holds and that fingers know
    When they caress a magic animal.
    There had been no such music here until
    A girl came in from falling dark and snow.

An Intruder
    The other day a witch came to call.
    She brought a basket full of woe and gall
    And left it there for me in my front hall.
    But it was empty when I found it there
    And she herself had gone back to her lair
    Leaving the bats of rage to fly my air.
    Out of ambivalence this witch was born;
    All that she gives is subtly smeared and torn
    Or slightly withered by her love and scorn.
    The furies sit and watch me as I write;
    The bats fly silently about all night
    And a black mist obscures the kindest light.
    But I shall find the magic note to play,
    Or, like a donkey, learn the wild flat bray
    That sends all furies howling on their way.
    The note is laughter. No witch could withstand
    The frightful joke all witches understand
    When they are given all that they demand.
    The word can neither bless nor curse, of course.
    It must bewitch a witch and leave her worse.
    Perhaps I’ll call her just a failed old nurse.
    Love cannot exorcize the gifts of hate.
    Hate cannot exorcize what has no weight,
    But laughter we can never over-rate.

The Muse As Medusa
    I saw you once, Medusa; we were alone.
    I looked you straight in the cold eye, cold.
    I was not punished, was not turned to stone—
    How to believe the legends I am told?
    I came as naked as any little fish,
    Prepared to be hooked, gutted, caught;
    But I saw you, Medusa, made my wish,
    And when I left you I was clothed in thought…
    Being allowed, perhaps, to swim my way
    Through the great deep and on the rising tide,
    Flashing wild streams, as free and rich as they,
    Though you had power marshalled on your side.
    The fish escaped to many a magic reef;
    The fish explored many a dangerous sea—
    The fish, Medusa, did not come to grief,
    But swims still in a fluid mystery.
    Forget the image: your silence is my ocean,
    And even now it teems with life. You chose
    To abdicate by total lack of motion,
    But did it work, for nothing really froze?
    It is all fluid still, that world of feeling
    Where thoughts, those fishes, silent, feed and rove;
    And, fluid, it is also full of healing,
    For love is healing, even rootless love.
    I turn your face around! It is my face.
    That frozen rage is what I must explore—
    Oh secret, self-enclosed, and ravaged place!
    This is the gift I thank Medusa for.

For Rosalind
    On Her Seventy-fifth Birthday
    Tonight we come to praise
    Her splendor, not her years,
    Pure form and what it burns—
    Who teaches this or learns?—
    Intrinsic, beyond tears,
    Splendor that has no age.
    Take your new-fangled beauties off the stage!
    The high poise of the throat
    That dazzled every heart—
    Who was not young and awed
    By beauty so unflawed
    It seemed not life, but art?—
    Terrible as a swan
    Young children, deeply moved, might look upon.
    The blazing sapphire eyes—
    They looked out from a queen.
    Yet there was wildness near;
    She glimmered like a deer
    No hunter could bring down.
    So warm, so wild, so proud,
    She moved among us like a light-brimmed
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