THE MAGNOLIA’S SHADE

The shade of the Japanese magnolia tree

dissipates now that the nearly purple buds

have fallen. An intermittent vibrato

of a cicada rises. It is no more

the moment of a unison as of voices,

Clizia, the era of illimitable godhead

which devours its faithful and restores their blood.

The being consumed was easier, the dying

at a wing’s first shudder, at the first encounter

with the enemy, that was play. Now commences

the harder way: not you, however, devoured

by the sun and rooted, yet a delicate

thrush able to flutter high above the freezing

wharves of your river’s edge,—it is not you, frail

fugitive for whom zenith nadir Cancer

Capricorn remained undistinguished, unmarked,

so that the war might be in you and in who worships

the esteem of your Bridegroom for you, that the sharp

frost forces to curl … The others fall to the rear

and buckle. The file which insidiously

grates away will be silenced, and the empty shell

of the man who sang will soon be pulverised

glass underfoot,—the shadow is like a bruise now,

it is autumn, it is winter, the beyond

which guides you and in which I fling myself, a fish

hopping clear of the sea in the full moon.

Goodbye.