To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots,
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

Companion Art: "Bauerngarten mit Kruzifix"

       I met a seer,
  Passing the hues and objects of the world,
  The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense,
       To glean eidolons.

       Put in thy chants said he,
  No more the puzzling hour nor day, nor segments, parts, put in,
  Put first before the rest as light for all and entrance-song of all,
       That of eidolons.

       Ever the dim beginning,
  Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle,
  Ever the summit and the merge at last, (to surely start again,)
       Eidolons! eidolons!

       Ever the mutable,
  Ever materials, changing, crumbling, re-cohering,
  Ever the ateliers, the factories divine,
       Issuing eidolons.

       Lo, I or you,
  Or woman, man, or state, known or unknown,
  We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build,
       But really build eidolons.

       The ostent evanescent,
  The substance of an artist's mood or savan's studies long,
  Or warrior's, martyr's, hero's toils,
       To fashion his eidolon.

       Of every human life,
  (The units gather'd, posted, not a thought, emotion, deed, left out,)
  The whole or large or small summ'd, added up,
       In its eidolon.

       The old, old urge,
  Based on the ancient pinnacles, lo, newer, higher pinnacles,
  From science and the modern still impell'd,
       The old, old urge, eidolons.

       The present now and here,
  America's busy, teeming, intricate whirl,
  Of aggregate and segregate for only thence releasing,
       To-day's eidolons.

       These with the past,
  Of vanish'd lands, of all the reigns of kings across the sea,
  Old conquerors, old campaigns, old sailors' voyages,
       Joining eidolons.

       Densities, growth, facades,
  Strata of mountains, soils, rocks, giant trees,
  Far-born, far-dying, living long, to leave,
       Eidolons everlasting.

       Exalte, rapt, ecstatic,
  The visible but their womb of birth,
  Of orbic tendencies to shape and shape and shape,
       The mighty earth-eidolon.

       All space, all time,
  (The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns,
  Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use,)
       Fill'd with eidolons only.

       The noiseless myriads,
  The infinite oceans where the rivers empty,
  The separate countless free identities, like eyesight,
       The true realities, eidolons.

       Not this the world,
  Nor these the universes, they the universes,
  Purport and end, ever the permanent life of life,
       Eidolons, eidolons.

       Beyond thy lectures learn'd professor,
  Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope observer keen, beyond all mathematics,
  Beyond the doctor's surgery, anatomy, beyond the chemist with his chemistry,
       The entities of entities, eidolons.

       Unfix'd yet fix'd,
  Ever shall be, ever have been and are,
  Sweeping the present to the infinite future,
       Eidolons, eidolons, eidolons.

       The prophet and the bard,
  Shall yet maintain themselves, in higher stages yet,
  Shall mediate to the Modern, to Democracy, interpret yet to them,
       God and eidolons.

       And thee my soul,
  Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations,
  Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet,
       Thy mates, eidolons.

       Thy body permanent,
  The body lurking there within thy body,
  The only purport of the form thou art, the real I myself,
       An image, an eidolon.

       Thy very songs not in thy songs,
  No special strains to sing, none for itself,
  But from the whole resulting, rising at last and floating,
       A round full-orb'd eidolon.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Companion art: "Cara Mujer"

In front of the sombre mountains, a faint, lost ribbon of rainbow,
And between us and it, the thunder;
And down below, in the green wheat, the labourers
Stand like dark stumps, still in the green wheat.

You are near to me, and your naked feet in their sandals,
And through the scent of the balcony's naked timber
I distinguish the scent of your hair; so now the limber
Lightning falls from heaven.

Adown the pale-green, glacier-river floats
A dark boat through the gloom—and whither?
The thunder roars. But still we have each other.
The naked lightnings in the heaven dither
And disappear. What have we but each other?
The boat has gone.

Companion Art: " Prince Salim (the future Jahangir) and his legendary illicit love, the dancing girl Anarkali"

Thirty feet tall.
Each of them 
A house of love.

Pale pachyderm legs
Hold fast to fickle Earth
While crooked bones rise like prayers
That ache for Heaven.

Flush, ablush,
She cranes to the moon,
And he kisses her neck
Right along the trench
That bubbles with her rising sap.

Companion Art: "The Lovers," adapted by John Farley. Original image

One must be for ever drunken: that is the sole question of importance. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time that bruises your shoulders and bends you to the earth, you must be drunken without cease. But how? With wine, with poetry, with virtue, with what you please. But be drunken. And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass by a moat, or in the dull loneliness of your chamber, you should waken up, your intoxication already lessened or gone, ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the timepiece; ask of all that flees, all that sighs, all that revolves, all that sings, all that speaks, ask of these the hour; and wind and wave and star and bird and timepiece will answer you: "It is the hour to be drunken! Lest you be the martyred slaves of Time, intoxicate yourselves, be drunken without cease! With wine, with poetry, with virtue, or with what you will."

Companion art: Scary Crazy Man Woman Person

       Thou hast nor youth nor age
       But as it were an after dinner sleep
       Dreaming of both.

     Here I am, an old man in a dry month,
     Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.
     I was neither at the hot gates
     Nor fought in the warm rain
     Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass,
     Bitten by flies, fought.
     My house is a decayed house,
     And the jew squats on the window sill, the owner,
     Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp,
     Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London.
     The goat coughs at night in the field overhead;
     Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds.
     The woman keeps the kitchen, makes tea,
     Sneezes at evening, poking the peevish gutter.

                       I an old man,
     A dull head among windy spaces.

     Signs are taken for wonders. "We would see a sign":
     The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
     Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year
     Came Christ the tiger

     In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering Judas,
     To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk
     Among whispers; by Mr. Silvero
     With caressing hands, at Limoges
     Who walked all night in the next room;
     By Hakagawa, bowing among the Titians;
     By Madame de Tornquist, in the dark room
     Shifting the candles; Fraulein von Kulp
     Who turned in the hall, one hand on the door. Vacant shuttles
     Weave the wind. I have no ghosts,
     An old man in a draughty house
     Under a windy knob.

     After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
     History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
     And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
     Guides us by vanities. Think now
     She gives when our attention is distracted
     And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
     That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
     What's not believed in, or if still believed,
     In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
     Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with
     Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
     Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
     Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
     Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
     These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

     The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last
     We have not reached conclusion, when I
     Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last
     I have not made this show purposelessly
     And it is not by any concitation
     Of the backward devils.
     I would meet you upon this honestly.
     I that was near your heart was removed therefrom
     To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.
     I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it
     Since what is kept must be adulterated?
     I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch:
     How should I use it for your closer contact?

     These with a thousand small deliberations
     Protract the profit of their chilled delirium,
     Excite the membrane, when the sense has cooled,
     With pungent sauces, multiply variety
     In a wilderness of mirrors. What will the spider do,
     Suspend its operations, will the weevil
     Delay? De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel, whirled
     Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear
     In fractured atoms. Gull against the wind, in the windy straits
     Of Belle Isle, or running on the Horn,
     White feathers in the snow, the Gulf claims,
     And an old man driven by the Trades
     To a sleepy corner.

                       Tenants of the house,
     Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.

Companion Art: "Histology of Chronic Hypersensitivity Pneumonitis", by Mutleysmith