(for which there are no rhymes)
Not as height rises into lightness
Nor as length strengthens-say, the accepting eye
Calmed by a longing of shoreline—
Breadth wields its increase over nothing, to the greater
Glory of nothing: our unwanted dimension,
Yet necessary.
What the square can share of its rightness
Extends a just plainness; the sure swerve of a
Curve continues beyond itself.
But O, the old closure! Circle of will returning
Inward to prison, wrenching all tangencies back,
Lest there be friendship
Even in clever touchings that the
City solders with pity or with desiring,
Or of mountain’s unique bond with
The fountains gushing forth from it that cry out of high
Things. Solitariness of Desert ever
Stretches out in vain,
Lonely Monarch of all who survey
Its wearying inclusiveness, subject to
No true attachments as a fool’s
To his toy tool, jingling self-image, nor object of
Blunderings that it keeps ever breeding-wife of
Self-created strife.
Sole rondures of day unrolling stay
The approach of stillness, and between them and
The larger wheel of year appear
The lunar counterturns in cold, reflected selfhood
Of Month, unbound to sun but only barely out
Of phase with its rounds.
These solitaries! whether bright or
Dim, unconstellated words rain down through the
Darkness: after youth has burned out
His tallow truth, and love, which above everything must
Cling to word and body, drains, Wisdom remains full,
Whole, unrhymable.
Intone them then: Breadth Circle Desert
Monarch Month Wisdom not for whatever spell
They generate but for their mere
Inexorable syntax. The eye’s movement outward
Claims its huge dominions not by kinship, nor bond
Of common ending.
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