And over it they set a jagged sign,

Epitaphium to his death, which read,

The Good Man Has No Shape, as if they knew.

From the Packet of Anacharsis

In his packet Anacharsis found the lines:

“The farm was fat and the land in which it lay

Seemed in the morning like a holiday.”

He had written them near Athens. The farm was white.

The buildings were of marble and stood in marble light.

It was his clarity that made the vista bright.

A subject for Puvis. He would compose

The scene in his gray-rose with violet rocks.

And Bloom would see what Puvis did, protest

And speak of the floridest reality …

In the punctual centre of all circles white

Stands truly. The circles nearest to it share

Its color, but less as they recede, impinged

By difference and then by definition

As a tone defines itself and separates

And the circles quicken and crystal colors come

And flare and Bloom with his vast accumulation

Stands and regards and repeats the primitive lines.

The Dove in the Belly

The whole of appearance is a toy. For this,

The dove in the belly builds his nest and coos,

Selah, tempestuous bird. How is it that

The rivers shine and hold their mirrors up,

Like excellence collecting excellence?

How is it that the wooden trees stand up

And live and heap their panniers of green

And hold them round the sultry day? Why should

These mountains being high be, also, bright,

Fetched up with snow that never falls to earth?

And this great esplanade of corn, miles wide,

Is something wished for made effectual

And something more. And the people in costumes,

Though poor, though raggeder than ruin, have that

Within them right for terraces—oh, brave salut!

Deep dove, placate you in your hiddenness.

Mountains Covered with Cats

The sea full of fishes in shoals, the woods that let

One seed alone grow wild, the railway-stops

In Russia at which the same statue of Stalin greets

The same railway passenger, the ancient tree

In the centre of its cones, the resplendent flights

Of red facsimiles through related trees,

White houses in villages, black communicants—

The catalogue is too commodious.

Regard the invalid personality

Instead, outcast, without the will to power

And impotent, like the imagination seeking

To propagate the imagination or like

War’s miracle begetting that of peace.

Freud’s eye was the microscope of potency.

By fortune, his gray ghost may meditate

The spirits of all the impotent dead, seen clear,

And quickly understand, without their flesh,

How truly they had not been what they were.

The Prejudice Against the Past

Day is the children’s friend.

It is Marianna’s Swedish cart.

It is that and a very big hat.

Confined by what they see,

Aquiline pedants treat the cart,

As one of the relics of the heart.

They treat the philosopher’s hat,

Left thoughtlessly behind,

As one of the relics of the mind …

Of day, then, children make

What aquiline pedants take