Logos, the star-born tongue: how came
So stark a statement from a scroll,
Consumed, as though the dead could tame
All moods by midnight’s strict control?
Fire in a moment flies intent
The works of reason to unwind.
How reconcile that element
To the slow writing of mankind?
Who stole the sacred fennel stalk?
The will endures till fetters break.
There the immortal visions walk.
A Titan suffers for your sake.
Come near; crouch low; heap stick on stick.
Throw pine-cones to the Winter’s flame.
Gold in the draught, a sudden prick
Tattoos in light a whispered name.
What ransom can the witness give
For prophecy, the loot of thieves?
Future and past the sparks make live,
Battening like locusts on their sheaves.
In vain you pledge your dearest things
To the rash floor of that dark urn.
Light murders thought, and then gives wings.
No migratory words return.
How fast they vanish: see them die,
The very words you lately breathed.
Lit by a thread, betrayed they lie
Dead in the sunken embers wreathed,
Where whistling, rustling, weaving Fates
Snatch on a gust the shrouds they made
Whose testament a god translates
Where light must learn a dying trade.
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