Change and Transformation

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

Garlic and sapphires in the mud Clot the bedded axle-tree. The trilling wire in the blood Sings below inveterate scars And reconciles forgotten wars.

Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown, Lilac and brown hair; Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair, Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair Climbing the third stair.

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air The air which is now thoroughly small and dry Smaller and dryer than the will Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

Two live as one One live as two Two live as three Under the bam Under the boo Under the bamboo tree.

There will be time to murder and create.

Lend me the stone strength of the past and I will lend you The wings of the future, for I have them.

Crises of expression and spasms of eros: that’s the man of today, the inside a vacuum, the continuity of personality provided by his suit, which with stout cloth might be good for ten years.

For three years, out of key with his time, He strove to resuscitate the dead art Of poetry; to maintain “the sublime” In the old sense. Wrong from the start— No, hardly, but seeing he had been born In a half savage country, out of date.

And, capable, created in his mind, Eventual victor, out of the martyrs’ bones The ultimate elegance: the imagined land.

Beauty is momentary in the mind— The fitful tracing of a portal; But in the flesh it is immortal. The body dies; the body’s beauty lives.

Twenty men crossing a bridge, Into a village, Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges, Into twenty villages, Or one man Crossing a single bridge into a village.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day When the sun is out and the wind is still, You’re one month on in the middle of May. But if you so much as dare to speak, A cloud comes over the sunlit arch, A wind comes off a frozen peak, And you’re two months back in the middle of March.

The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued.

Most of the change we think we see in life Is due to truths being in and out of favor.

Ah, when to the heart of man Was it ever less than a treason To go with the drift of things, To yield with a grace to reason, And bow and accept the end Of a love or a season?

They would not find me changed from him they knew— Only more sure of all I thought was true.

Grant me an old man’s frenzy, Myself must I remake Till I am Timon and Lear Or that William Blake Who beat upon the wall Till Truth obeyed his call.

Speech after long silence; it is right, All other lovers being estranged or dead… That we descant and yet again descant Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song: Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young We loved each other and were ignorant.

“Fair and foul are near of kin, And fair needs foul,” I cried. “My friends are gone, but that’s a truth Nor grave nor bed denied.”

What they undertook to do They brought to pass; All things hang like a drop of dew Upon a blade of grass.

The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain.

Locke sank into a swoon; The Garden died; God took the spinning-jenny Out of his side.

Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enameling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come. 6