In dreaming mouths combining sweet and salt,
So that they smile for warmth, and weep for loss,
And waking, hope and fear to dream again.
So says the old nurse, and the boys grow strong.
Outside our small safe place flies Mystery.
We hear it howl adown the winds; we see
Its forces set great whirlpools on the spin
In the dark deeps, as a child sets a top
Idly in motion, whips it for a while
Then tires and lets it stagger. On grey walls
We see the indents of its viewless teeth.
We hear it snake beneath the forest floor
Weaving the lives and deaths of roots, the weft
And warp of pillar-boles and tracery
Of twigs and sighing sunkist canopies
Which sway and change, glow and decay and fall.
Inhuman Powers cross our little lives.
The whale's warm milk runs beneath icy seas.
Electric currents run from eye to eye
And pole to pole, magnetic messages
From out our Beings, through them, and beyond.
The whelk's foot grips; the waves pile fragments up
Smooth sands compacted, skull on shell on scrap
Of horny carapace on silex sparks
Sandstone and chalk and grit, and out of these
Sculpts dunes like dinosaurs and mammoth banks
And breaks them back to flying specks of stuff.
____________________
I read, writ in the ancient chronicle
By John of Arras (who wrote for his Lord
To please and to instruct), "King David said
The judgments of the Lord are like vast deeps
With neither wall nor bottom, where the soul
Spins in a place without foundation
Which comprehensively engulfs the mind
That cannot comprehend it." The monk, John,
Humbly concludes the human soul should not
Use reason where it cannot stretch to work.
A reasonable man, says the good monk,
Must see that Aristotle told the truth
Who stated firmly that the world contained
Creatures invisible and visible
Both in their kind. He cited next St Paul
Who claimed the first Invisibles of the world
As witnesses to their Creator's Power,
Beyond the scope of men's inquiring mind
Save as revealed from time to time in Books
Writ by wise men, as guides to wandering wits.
And in the air, says the brave Monk, there fly
Things, Beings, Creatures, never seen by us
But very potent in their wandering world,
Crossing our heavy paths from time to time,
And such, he says, are faeries or Fates
Whom Paracelsus said were Angels once
Now neither damn'd nor blessed, simply tossed
Eternally between the solid earth
And Heav'n's closed golden gate…
Not good enough to save, spirits of air
Not evil neither, with no steadfast harm
In their intents, but simply volatile.
The Laws of Heaven run through the earth as poles
That twist and turn this Globe at His command
Or net (to change the metaphor) the skies
And seas and all the swaying, moving mass
In fine constraining meshes, beyond which
Matter slips not, and mind may never step
Save into vacant Horror and Despair
Forms of illusion only
What are they
Who haunt our dreams and weaken our desires
And turn us from the solid face of things?
Sisters of Horror, or Heav'n's exiled queens
Reduced from spirit-power to fantasy?
The Angels of the Lord, from Heaven's Gate
March helmeted in gold and silver ranks
Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers,
As quick as thought between desire and deed.
They are the instruments of Law and Grace.
Then who are those who wander indirect
Those whose desires mount precipice of Air
As easy as say wink, or plunge again
For pleasure of the terror in the cleft
Between the dark brow of a mounting cloud
And plain sky's opal ocean? Who are they
Whose soft hands cannot shift the fixed chains
Of cause and law that bind the earth and sea
And ice and fire and flesh and blood and time?
When heavenly Eros lay at Psyche's side,
Her envious sisters said, the light of day
Would show a monstrous serpent was her Lord.
When she transgressed and held the trembling flame
Over the bed, the drops of wax fell fast
On love in perfect human form, who rose
In burning anger from his place and fled.
But let the Power take a female form
And 'tis the Power is punished. All men shrink
From dire Medusa and her writhing locks.
Who weeps for Scylla in her cave of bones,
Thrashing her tail and howling for her fate
With yelping hound-mouths, though she once was fair,
Loved by the sea-god for her mystery
Daughter of Hecate, beautiful as Night?