… If an animal lives and moves, it can only be, he thinks, because there is a little animal inside which moves it; if a man lives and moves it can only be because he has a little man or animal inside who moves him. The animal inside the animal, the man inside the man, is the soul. … To this some of the blacks replied, Yes, yes. We also are two, we also have a little body within the breast. …
THE GOLDEN BOUGH
I
SHADOW IMAGE
The short shadow
Squat and flat
Dwarfs the bole, says short is true;
The tall shadow
Says giant, giant.
But the tree lifts, says green on bluest.
On the black rainbow
Of wet sand
Flies over fast and tilted wing:
The gull’s shadow.
And the hand
Casts on the dust its shadow-fingers.
The dark soul
Is shadow-word
Of the beast or man, the dark map
Of its soul, the shade of the bird
For which they set a shadow-trap.
II
SHADOW-NOTE
There is this footnote to the shadow:
It has the cruelty of innocence.
It will neither make excuses nor give details,
As: this is how it happened …
Or: how worn his face was …
So that the particular body throws
The universal shadow on the sand,
Carpet, pine-needles, cement, grave-sod
Telling one thing: the truth
Without proportion, by its mass.
Where the substance would reach the doubtful senses,
The shadow goes past, immediate and in depth,
To your most private recognition
Of a gallows on gravel,
A cat on bright grass.
III
WATER IMAGE
The houses waver in the water, waver,
flow over, stain and shudder.
Distorted, faithful, nothing is ignored,
all-contour, color-paired;
all-color, contour–changed. Untouchable:
water is brick and gable.
If the midnight heart, hunting love’s
face meets in its place
his own, now will he drown, by such a loss,
in the silent brightness.
Narcissus, ravished, leaned a long moment
over this element:
the water-image then with a light shiver
drew down its lover
letting the fountain laughter play its gleam
over the rooted bloom.
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