PUELLA PARVULA

Every thread of summer is at last unwoven.

By one caterpillar is great Africa devoured

And Gibraltar is dissolved like spit in the wind.

But over the wind, over the legends of its roaring,

The elephant on the roof and its elephantine blaring,

The bloody lion in the yard at night or ready to spring

From the clouds in the midst of trembling trees

Making a great gnashing, over the water wallows

Of a vacant sea declaiming with wide throat,

Over all these the mighty imagination triumphs

Like a trumpet and says, in this season of memory,

When the leaves fall like things mournful of the past,

Keep quiet in the heart, O wild bitch. O mind

Gone wild, be what he tells you to be: Puella

Write pax across the window pane. And then

Be still. The summarium in excelsis begins…

Flame, sound, fury composed … Hear what he says,

The dauntless master, as he starts the human tale.