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The Bhagavad Gita (Books 1 - 5)

Books 1 - 5: Here

Books 6 -10: Here

Books 11 -14: Here

Books 15 -18: Here

(From the version translated by Winthrop Sargeant. In Sanskrit and English, available here. The following copies the English translation of the verses)

BOOK 1 | The Despondency of Arjuna

Dhritarashtra spoke:

When they were in the field

of virtue, in the field of the Kurus,

Assembled together, desiring to fight,

What did my army and that of the

Sons of Pandu do, Sanjaya?

Sanjaya spoke:

Seeing indeed the army

Of the sons of Pandu arrayed,

King Duryodhana, approaching his

Master (Drona),

Spoke these words:

Behold O Master, this great army

Of the sons of Pandu

Arrayed by the son of Drupada,

Wise by your instruction.

Here are heroes, mighty archers,

Equal in battle to Bhima and Arjuna,

Yuyudhana and Virata,

And Drupada, the great warrior;

Dhrishtaketu, Chekitana,

And the valorous King of Kashi,

Purojit and Kuntibhoja

And Shaibya, bull among men.

And mighty Yudhamanyu

And valorous uttamaujas;

The son of Subhadra and the sons of

Draupadi,

All indeed great warriors.

Those of ours who are indeed

distinguished,

Know them! O highest of the

Twiceborn,

The leaders of my army

I name for you by proper names:

Your Lordship and Bhishma and

Karna

and Kripa, always victorious in battle,

Ashvatthama and Vikarna

and the son of Somdatta also;

And many other heroes

whose lives are risked for my sake,

attacking with various weapons,

all skilled in battle.

Sufficient is that force of ours

Guarded by Bhishma;

Insufficient though is

The force guarded by Bhima.

And in all movements,

Stationed each in his respective place,

All of you, indeed,

Protect Bhishma!

Making him (Duryodhana) happy,

The aged Kuru, his grandsire,

Roaring like a lion,

Blew his conch horn powerfully.

And thereupon the conch horns and

the kettledrums,

The cymbals, drums and trumpets

All at once were sounded,

The uproar was tremendous.

Then, standing in the great chariot

Yoked with white horses,

Krishna and Arjuna

Sounded forth their divine conch

horns.

Krishna blew his Panchajanya;

Arjuna blew Devadatta,

While Bhima, trrrible in action,

Blew the great conch horn Paundra.

King Yudhishthira,

Son of Kunti, blew Anantavijaya;

Nakula and Sahadeva

Blew Sughosa and Manipushpaka.

And the King of Kashi, supreme

archer,

And Shikhandi, the great warrior,

Dhrishtadyumna and Virata

And Satyaki, the invincible;

Drupada and the sons of Draupadi

All togther, O Lord of the Earth

And the strong armed son of Subhadra

Blew their conch horns, each his own.

The noise burst asunder

The hearts of the sons of Dhritarashtra,
And the tumult caused

The sky and the earth to resound.

Then, Arjuna, having seen the sons of

Dhritarashtra

Drawn up in battle array,

Raised his bow as the clash of weapons (to begin perhaps) began.

Arjuna then spoke these words

to Krishna:

O Lord of the earth,

Cause my chariot to stand in the

middle

Between the two armies, Imperishable

One,

Until I behold these warriors,

Battle-hunger and arrayed.

With whom must I fight

In undertaking the battle?

I behold those who are about to give

battle,

Having come together here,

Wishing to do service in warfare

For the evil-minded son of Dhritarashtra

(Duryodhana).

Thus Krishna was addressed by Arjuna,

O Dhritarashtra,

Having caused the chief chariot

To stand in the middle between the

two armies.

Before the eyes of Bhishma and Drona

And all these rulers of the earth,

Arjuna said: Behold these

Kurus assembled.

Arjuna saw standing there

Fathers, then grandfathers,

Teachers, maternal uncles, brothers,

Sons, grandsons, friends as well;

Arjuna saw fathers-in-law, companions,

In the two armies,

And contemplated

All his kinsmen, arrayed.

Filled with infinite pity,

Despondent, he said this:

Having seen my own people,

Krishna,

Desiring to fight, approaching,

My limbs sink down,

My mouth dries up,

My body trembles,

And my hair stands on end;

Gandiva (Arjuna's bow) falls from

(my) hand,

My skin burns,

I am unable to remain as I am,

And my mind seems to ramble.

I perceive inauspicious omens,

O Krishna,

And I foresee misfortune

In destroying my own people in battle.

I do not desire victory, Krishna,

Nor kingship nor pleasures.

What is kingship to us, Krishna?

What are enjoyments, even life?

Those for whose sake we desire

Kingship, enjoyments, and pleasures,

They are arrayed here in battle,

Abandoning their lives and riches.

Teachers, fathers, sons,

And also grandfathers,

Maternal uncles, fathers-in-law,

grandsons,

Brothers-in-law, and other kinsmen.

I do not desire to kill

Them who are bent on killing,

Krishna,

Even for the sovereignty of the three

worlds.

How much less then for the earth?

What joy would it be for us

To strike down the sons of

Dhritarashtra, O Krishna?

Evil thus would clong to us,

Having killed these aggressors.

Therefore we are not justified in

killing

The sons of Dhritarashtra, our own

kinsmen.

How, having killed our own people,

Could we be happy, Krishna?

Even if those

Whose thoughts are overpowered

by greed do not perceive

The wrong caused by the destruction

of the family,

And the crime of treachery to friends.

Why should we not know enough

To turn back from this evil,

Through discernment of the wrong

caused

By the destruction of the family,

O Krishna?

In the destruction of the family,

The ancient family laws vanish;

When the law has perished,

Lawlessness overpowers the entire

family also.

Because of the ascendancy of

lawlessness, Krishna,

The family women are corrupted;

When women are corrupted,

O Krishna,

The intermixture of caste is born.

Intermixture brings to hell

The family destroyers and the

family, too;

The ancestors of these indeed fall,

Deprived of offerings of rice and water.

By these wrongs of the family

destroyers,

Producing intermixture of caste,

Caste duties are abolished,

And eternal family laws also.

Men whose family laws have been

obliterated,

O Krishna,

Dwell indefinitely in hell,

Thus we have heard repeatedly,

Ah! Alas! We are resolved

To do a great evil,

Which is to be intent on killing

Our own people, through greed for

royal pleasures.

If the armed sons of Dhritarashtra

Should kill me in battle

While I was unresisting and unarmed,

This would be a greater

happiness for me.

Thus having spoken on the battlefield,

Arjuna sat down upon the seat of the

chariot,

Throwing down both arrow and bow,

With a heart overcome by sorrow.

* * *

BOOK 2 | The Yoga of Knowledge

Sanjaya spoke:

To him thus overcome by pity,

despairing,

Whose eyes were filled with tears and

downcast,

Krishna spoke these words:

The Blessed Lord spoke:

Whence has this timidity of yours

Come to you in time of danger?

It is not acceptable in you, does not

lead to heaven,

And causes disgrace, Arjuna.

Do not become a coward, Arjuna.

This is not suitable to you.
Abandoning base faintheartedness

Stand up, Arjuna!

Arjuna spoke:

How can I kill in battle

Bhishma and Drona, O Krishna?

How can I fight with arrows against

These two venerable men, O Krishna?

Indeed, instead of slaying these noble

gurus

It would be preferable to live on

alms here on earth;

Having slain the gurus, with desire for

worldly gain,

I would enjoy here on earth delights

smeared with blood.

And this we do not know: which for

us is preferable,

Whether we should conquer them or

they should conquer us.

The sons of Dhritarashtra, having

killed whom we would not wish

to live,

Are standing before us.

My own being is overcome by

pity and weakness.

My mind is confused as to my

duty. I ask you

Which is preferable, for certain?

Tell that to me, your pupil. Correct me,

I beg you.

Indeed, I do not see what will

dispel

This sorrow of mine which dries up

my senses,

Even if I should obtain on earth

unrivaled and

Prosperous royal power, or even the

sovereignty of the gods.

Sanjaya spoke:

Thus having addressed Krishna,

Arjuna said,

"I shall not fight,"

And having spoken, he became silent.

To him, the dejected Arjuna, Krishna,

Beginning to laugh, O Dhritarashtra,

In the middle between the two armies,

Spoke these words:

The Blessed Lord spoke:

You have mourned those that should

not be mourned,

And you speak words as if with

wisdom;

The wise do not mourn for the dead

or for the living.

Truly there was never a time when

I was not,

Nor you, nor these lords of men;

And neither will there be a time when

we shall cease to be

From this time onward.

Just as in the body childhood,

adulthood, and old age

Happen to an embodied being,

So also he (the embodied being) acquires

another body.

The wise one is not deluded about this.

Physical sensations, truly, Arjuna,

Causing cold, heat, pleasure, or pain,

Come and go and are impermanent.

So manage to endure them, Arjuna.

Indeed, the man whom these (i.e. the

sensations) do not afflict,

O Arjuna,

The wise one, to whom happiness and

unhappiness are the same,

Is ready for immortality.

It is found that the unreal has no being;

It is found that there is no non-being

of the real.

The certainty of both these

propositions is indeed surely seen

By the perceivers of truth.

Know that that by which all this

universe.

Is pervaded is indeed indestructible;

No one is able to accomplish

The destruction of the imperishable.

These bodies inhabited by the eternal,

The indestructible, the immeasurable

embodied Self,

Are said to come to an end.

Therefore fight, Arjuna!

He who imagines this (the embodied

Self) the slayer

And he who imagined this

(the embodied Self) the slain,

Neither of them understands

This (the embodied Self) does not slay,

nor is it slain.

Neither is this (the embodied Self)

born nor does it die at any time,

Nor, having been, will it again come

not to be.

Birthless, eternal, perpetual,

primaeval,

It is not slain when the body is slain.

He who knows this, the indestructible,

the eternal,

The birthless, the imperishable,

In what way does this man cause to

be slain, Arjuna?

Whom does he slay?

As, after casting away worn out

garments,

A man later takes new ones,

So, after casting away worn out bodies,

The embodied Self encounters other,

new ones.

Weapons do not pierce this (the

embodied Self),

Fire does not burn this,

Water does not wet this,

Nor does the wind cause it to wither.

This cannot be pierced, burned,

Wetted or withered;

This is eternal, all pervading, fixed;

This is unmoving and primeval.

It is said that this unmanifest,

Unthinkable, and unchanging.

Therefore, having understood

in whis way,

You should not mourn.

And moreover even if you think

this

To be eternally born or eternally

dead,

Even then

You should not mourn for this, Arjuna.

For the born, death is certain;

For the dead there is certainly birth.

Therefore, for this, inevitable in

consequence,

You should not mourn.

Beings are such that their beginnings

are unmanifest,

Their middles are manifest,

And their ends are unmanifest again.

What complaint can there be over

this?

Someone perceives this as a wonder,

Another declares this as a wonder,

Still another hears of this as a wonder;

But even having heard of this, no one

knows it.

This, the embodied Self, is eternally

indestructible

In the body of all, Arjuna.

Therefore you should not mourn

For any being.

And, perceiving your own caste

duty,

You should not tremble.

Indeed, anything superior to righteous

battle

Does not exist for the kshatriya

(man of warrior caste).

And if by good fortune they gain

The open gate of heaven,

Happy are the kshatriyas, Arjuna,

When they encounter such a fight.

Now, if you will not undertake

This righteous war,

Thereupon, having avoided your own

duty and glory,

You shall incur evil.

And also people will relate

Your undying infamy;

And, for one who has been honored,

Disgrace is worse than dying.

The great warriors will think

That you have abstained from the battle

through fear,

And among those by whom you have

been held in high esteem

You shall come to be held lightly.

And your enemies will speak

many words of you that should not be

spoken,

deriding your capacity.

What greater hardship is there than that?

Either, having been slain, you shall

attain heaven,

Or, having conquered, you shall enjoy

the earth.

Therefore stand up, Arjuna,

Resolved to fight.

Holding pleasure and pain to be alike,

Likewise gain and loss, victory and

defeat,

Then engage in battle!

Thus you shall not incur evil.

This (insidght) is wisdom, as declared

in the theory of Sankhya;

Now hear it as applied in arduous

practice;

Yoked with this determination, Arjuna,

You shall rid yourself of the bondage

of karma.

Here (in the yoga doctrine of practice)

no effort is lost,

Nor is any loss of progress found.

Even a little of this discipline

Protects one from great danger.

Here there is a single resolute

understanding, Arjuna.

The thoughts of the irresolute

Have many branches and are, indeed,

endless.

The ignorant ones proclaim

This flowery discourse, Arjuna,

Delighting in the letter of the Veda,

And saying, "There is nothing else."

Full of desires, intent on

heaven,

They offer rebirth as the fruit of action,

And are addicted to many specific rites

Aimed at the goal of enjoyment and

power.

To those (the ignorant ones) attached

to enjoyment and power,

Whose thought is stolen away by this

kind of talk,

Resolute insght

In meditation is not granted.

The Vedas are such that their scope is

confined to the three qualities;

Be free from those three qualities,

Arjuna,

Indifferent toward the pairs of

opposites, eternally fixed in truth,

Free from thoughts of acquisition

and comfort, possessed of the Self.

As much value as there is in a well

When water is flooding on every side,

So much is the value in a all the Vedas

For a brahman who knows.

Your right is to action alone;

Never to its fruits at any time.

Never should the fruits of action be

your motive;

Never let there be attachment

to inaction in you.

Fixed in yoga, perform actions,

Having abandoned attachment,

Arjuna,

And having become indifferent to success

or failure.

It is said that evenness of mind is yoga.

Action is inferior by far

To the yoga of wisdom, Arjuna.

Seek refuge in wisdom!

Despicable are those whose motives

are based on the fruit of action.

He whose wisdom is established

Casts off, here in the world, both good

and evil actions;

Therefore devote yourself to yoga!

Yoga is skill in action.

Those who are established in wisdom,

The wise ones, who have abandones

the fruit born of action,

And are freed from the bondages of

rebirth,

Go to the place that is free from pain.

When your intellect crosses

beyond

The thicket of delusion, then you

shall become disgusted

With that which is yet to be heard

And with that which has been heard

(in the Veda).

When your intellect stands

fixed in deep meditation, unmoving

disregarding Vedic doctrine,

then you shall attain Self-realization.

Arjuna spoke:

How does one describe him who is

of steady wisdom,

Who is steadfast in deep meditation,

Krishna?

How does he who is steady in

wisdom speak?

How does he sit? How does he

move?

The Blessed Lord spoke:

When he leaves behind all desires

Emerging from the mind, Arjuna,

And is contented in the Self by the Self,

Then he is said to be one whose

wisdom is steady.

He whose mind is not agitated in

misfortune,

Whose desire for pleasure has

disappeared,

Whose passion, fear, and anger have

departed,

And whose meditation is steady, is said to

be a sage.

He who is without attachment on all sides,

Encountering this or that, pleasant or

unpleasant,

Neither rejoicing nor disliking;

His wisdom stands firm.

And when he withdraws completely

The senses from the objects of the

senses,

As a tortoise withdraws its limbs

into its shell,

His wisdom stands firm.

Sense objects turn away from

the abstinent man,

But the taste of them remains;

But the taste also turns away

From him who has seen the

Supreme.

The turbulent senses

Carrry away forcibly

The mind, Arjuna,

Even of the striving man of wisdom.

Restraining all these senses,

Disciplined, he should sit, intent on

Me;

He whose senses are controlled,

His wisdom stands firm.

For a man dwelling on the objects of

the senses,

An attachment to them is born;

From attachment, desire is botn;

From desire, anger is born;

From anger arises delusion;

From delusion, loss of the

memory;

From loss of the memory, destruction

of discrimination;

From destruction of discrimination

one is lost.

With the elimination of desire and

hatred,

Even though moving among the objects of

the senses,

He who is controlled by the Self,

By self-restraint, attains tranquility.

In tranquility the cessation of all

sorrows

Is born for him.

Indeed, for the tranquil-minded

The intellect at once becomes

steady.

There is no wisdom in

him who is uncontrolled,

And there is likewise no concentration

in him who is uncontrolled,

And in him who does not concentrate,

there is no peace.

How can there be happiness for him

who is not peaceful?

When the mind runs

After the wandering senses,

Then it carries away one's

understanding,

As the wind carries away a ship on

the waters.

Therefore, O Arjuna,

The wisdom of him whose senses

Are withdrawn from the objects of the

senses;

That wisdom stands firm.

The man of restraint is awake

In that which is night for all beings;

The time in which all beings are

awake

Is night for the sage who sees.

Like the ocean, which becomes filled

yet remains unmoved and stands still

As the waters enter it,

He whom all desures enter and who

remains unmoved

Attains peace; not so the main who is

full of desire.

The man who abandons all desires

Acts free from longing.

Indifferent to possessions, free from

egoticism,

He attains peace.

This is the divine state, Arjuna.

Having attained this, he is not

deluded;

Fixed in it, even at the hour of death,

He reaches the bliss of God.

* * *

BOOK 3 | The Yoga of Action

Arjuna spoke:

If it is Your convixtion that knowledge

Is better than action, O Krishna,

Then why do You urge me to engage

in this terrible action?

With speech that seems equivocal,

You confuse my intelligence.

Tell me surely this one thing:

How should I attain the highest good?

The Blessed Lord spoke;

In this world there is a two-fold basis

(of devotion)

Taught since ancient times by Me,

O Arjuna:

That of knowledge - the yoga of the

followers of Sankhya

And that of action - the yoga of the

yogins.

Not by abstentation from actions

Does a man attain the state beyond

karma,

And not by renunciation alone

Does he approach perfection.

Indeed, no one, even in the twinkling

of an eye,

Ever exists without performing action;

Everyone is forced to perform action,

even action which is against his

will,

By the qualities which originate in

material nature.

He who sits, restraining his organs of

action,

While in his mind brooding over

The objects of the senses, with a

deluded mind,

Is said to be a hypocrite.

Bue he who undertakes the control

of the senses by the mind, Arjuna,

and, without attachment, engages the

organs of action

in the yoga of action, is superior.

Perform your duty,

For action is indeed better than

nonaction,

And even the mere maintenance of

your body

Could not be accomplished without

action.

Aside from action for the purpose of

sacrifice,

The world is bound by action.

Perform action for the purpose of

sacrifice, Arjuna,

Free from attachment.

Having created manking along with

sacrifice,

Prajapati (the Lord of Creatures)

anciently said,

"By this (i.i. sacrifice), may you bring

forth;

May this be your wishfulfilling cow."

"By this (i.e. sacrifice) may you

nourish the gods

and may the gods nourish you;

by nourishing each other,

you shall attain the highest welfare."

"The gods, nourished by the

sacrifice,

Will indeed give you desired enjoyments;

He who enjoys these gifsts while not

offering to them in return,

Is a thief."

The good, who eat the remainder

of the sacrifice,

Are released from all evils;

But the wicked, who cook only for

their own sake,

Eat their own impurity.

Beings exist from food,

Food is brought into being by rain,

Rain from sacrifice,

And sacrifice is brought into being by

action.

Know that ritual action originates in

Brahman (the Vedas)

And Brahman arises from the

Impersihable;

Therefore the all-pervading Brahman

Is eternally established in sacrifice.

He who does, here on earth,

Turns the wheel thus set in motion,

Lives, Arjuna,

Maliciously, full of sense delights, and in

vain.

He whose delight is only in the Self,

Whose satisfaction is in the Self,

And who is content only in the Self;

For him the need to act does not exist.

He has no purpose at all in action.

Or in non-action,

And he has no need of any being

For any purpose whatsoever.

Therefore, constantly unattached,

Perform that action which is your duty.

Indeed, by performing action while

unattached,

Man attains the Supreme.

Perfection was attained by kings like

Janaka

With action alone

For the mere maintenance of the world,

You should act.

Whatever the greatest man does,

Thus do the rest;

Whatever standard he sets,

The world follows that.

For Me, O Arjuna, there is nothing

whatever

To be done in the three worlds,

Nor is there anything not attained

to be attained.

Nevertheless I engage in action.

Indeed, if I, unwearied, should not

engage

In action at all,

Mankind would follow

My path everywhere, O Arjuna.

If I did not perform action,

These worlds would perish

And I would be the cause of confusion;

I would destroy these creatures.

While those who are unwise act

From attachment to action, O Arjuna,

So the wise should act without

attachment,

Intending to maintain the welfare

of the world.

One should not unsettle the minds of

The ignorant who are attached to action;

The wise one should cause them to

enjoy all actions;

While himself performing actions in

a disciplined manner.

Actions in all cases are performed

By the qualities of material nature;

He whose mind is confused by egoism

Imagines, "I am the doer."

But he who knows the truth, O Arjuna,

About the two roles of the qualities

and action, thinking,

"The qualities work among the qualities,"

Is not attached.

Those deluded by the qualities of

material nature

Are attached to the actions of the qualities.

The perfect knower should not

disturb

The foolish men of incomplete knoweldge.

Deferring all actions in Me,

Meditating on the supreme Spirit,

Having become free from desire

and selfishness,

With your fever departed, fight!

Men who constantly practice

This teaching of Mine,

Believing, not sneering,

Are also released from the bondage of

actions.

But those who, sneering at this,

Do not practice My teaching,

Confusing all wisdom,

Know them to be lost and mindless.

One acts according to one's own

material nature.

Even the wise man does so.

Beings follow their own material

nature;

What will restraint accomplish?

Passion and hatred are seated

In the senses in relation to their objects.

One should not come under the power

of these two;

They are indeed one's enemies.

Better one's own duty though deficient

Than the duty of another well performed.

Better is death in one's own duty;

The duty of another invites danger.

Arjuna spoke:

Then impelled, by what

Does a man commit this evil,

Unwillingly even, O Krishna,

As if urged by force?

The Blessed Lord spoke:

This force is desire, this force is anger;

Its source is the rajas guna.

Voracious and greatly injurious,

Know this to be the enemy.

As fire is obscured by smoke,

And a mirror by dust,

As the embryo is enveloped by the

membrane,

So the intellect is obscured by passion.

O Arjuna, the knoweldge even of the

wise ones is obscured

By this eternal enemy,

Having the form of desire

Which is as insatiable fire.

The senses, the mind and the intellect

Are said to be its (i.e. the eternal

enemy's) abode;

With these, it confuses the embodied

one,

Obscuring his knowledge.

Therefore, restraining the senses

First, O Arjuna,

Kill this evil demon

Which destroys knowledge and

discrimination.

They say that the senses are superior.

The mind is superior to the senses;

Moreover, the intellect is superior

to the mind;

That which is superior to the intellect

is the Self.

Thus having known that which is

higher than the intellect,

Sustaining the self by the Self,

Kill the enemy, O Arjuna,

Which has the form of desire and is

difficult to conquer.

* * *

BOOK 4 | The Yoga of Renunciation of Action in Knowledge

The Blessed Lord spoke:

I proclaimed this imperishable yoga

to Vivasvat;

Vivasavt communicated it to Manu,

And Manu imparted it to Ikshvaku.

Thus received by succession,

The royal seers know this;

After a long time here on earth,

This yoga has been lost, Arjuna.

This ancient yoga is today

Declared by Me to you,

Since you are my devotee and

friend.

This secret is supreme indeed.

Arjuna spoke:

Your birth was later,

The birth of Vivasvat earlier;

How should I understand this,

That you declared it in the

beginning?

The Blessed Lord spoke:

Many of My births have passed away,

And also yours, Arjuna.

I know them all;

You do noy know them,

Arjuna.

Although I am birthless and My nature

is imperishable,

Although I am the Lord of all beings,

Yet, by controlling My own material

nature,

I come into being by My own power.

Whenever a decrease of righteousness

Exists, Arjuna,

And there is rising up on

unrighteousness,

Then I manifest Myself.

For the protection of the good

And the destruction of evil doers,

For the sake of establishing

righteousness,

I am born in every age.

He who knows in truth

My divine birth and action,

Having left his body, he is

Not reborn; he comes to Me, Arjuna.

Thinking solely of Me, resorting to Me,

Many whose greed, fear, and anger

have departed,

Purified by the austerity of knowledge,

Have attained My state of being.

In whatever way,

Men take refuge in Me, I reward them.

Men everywhere, Arjuna,

Follow My path.

Desiring the success of ritual acts,

Men sacrifice here on earth to the

Vedic gods.

Quickly indeed in the world of men

Ritual acts bring success.

The system of four castes was created

by Me,

According to the distribution of the

qualities and their acts.

Although I am the creator of this (the

system),

Know Me to be the eternal non-doer.

Actions do not taint Me;

I have no desire for the fruit of action;

Thus he who comprehends Me

Is not bound by actions.

Having known this, the ancients,

Seeking release, also performed action.

Therefore perform action

As it was earlier performed by the

ancients.

"What is action? What is inaction?"

Thus, even the wise are confused

in this matter.

This action I shall explain to you,

Having known which, you shall be

released from evil.

One must know the nature of action,

The nature of wrong action,

And also the nature of inaction.

The way of action is profound.

He who perceives inaction in action,

And action in inaction,

Is wise among men;

He is a yogi and perform all actions.

He who has excluded desire and

motive

From all his enterprises,

And has consumed his karma in the

fire of knowledge,

Him the wise men call a sage.

He who has abandoned all attachment

to the fruits of action,

Always content, not dependent,

Even when performing action,

Does, in effect, nothing at all.

Performing action with the body alone,

Without wish, restrained in thought

and self,

With all motives of acquisiton

abandoned,

He incurs no evil.

Content with whatever comes to him,

Transcending the dualities (i.e. pleasure,

pain, etc,), free from envy,

Constant in mind whether in success

or in failure,

Even though he acts, he is not bound.

The work of one who is free from

attachment, who is liberated,

Whose thought is established in

knowledge,

Who does work only as a sacrifice,

Is wholly dissolved.

Brahman is the offering, Brahman is

the oblation

Poured out by Brahman into the fire of

Brahman,

Brahman is to be attained by him

Who always sees Brahman in action.

Some yogins perform

Sacrifice to the gods;

Others offer sacrifice,

By sacrifice itself, in the fire of

Brahman.

Others offer senses like hearing

In the fire of restraint;

Still others offer sound and other

objects of the senses

In the fire of the senses.

Others offer all actions of the senses

And actions of the vital breath

In the fire of the yoga of self-restraint

Which is kindled by knowledge.

Some offer as sacrifice their

material possessions

Or their austerities and practice

of yoga,

While ascetics of severe vows

Offer study of the scriptures

and knowledge as sacrifice.

Some offer inhalation into exhalation,

And others exhalation into inhalation,

Restraining the path of inhalation and

exhalation,

Intent on control of the vital breath.

Others who have restricted their foods

Offer the life breath into the life breath;

All these are knowers of sacrifice,

And their evils have been destroyed

through sacrifice.

The enjoyers of the nectar of the

sacrificial remnants

Go to primeval Brahman.

Not even this world is for the

non-sacrificing;

How then the other, Arjuna?

Thus sacrifices are of many kinds,

Spread out before Brahman.

Know them all to be born of action.

Thus knowing, you shall be released.

Better than the sacrifice of material

possessions

Is the wisdom sacrifice, Arjuna;

All actions without exception, Arjuna,

Is fully comprehended in wisdom.

Know this! Through humble

submission,

Through enquiry, through service (on

your own part),

The knowing ones, the perceivers of

truth,

Will be led to teach you knowledge.

Knowing that, you shall not again

Fall into delusion, Arjuna;

And by that knowledge you shall

see all beings

In yourself, and also in Me.

Even if you were the most evil

Of all evildoers,

You would cross over all wickedness

By the boat of knowledge.

As the kindled fire

Reduces firewood to ashes, Arjuna,

So the fire of knowledge

Reduces all action to ashes.

No purifier equal to knowledge

Is found here in the world;

He who is himself perfected in yoga

In time finds that knowledge in the

Self.

He who possesses faith attains

knowledge;

Devoted to that (knowledge),

restraining his senses,

Having attained knowledge, he quickly

attains

Supreme peace.

The man who is ignorant, and

does not have faith,

Who is of a doubting nature, is

destroyed.

Neither this world nor that beyond,

Nor happiness, is for him who

doubts.

Action does not bind him

Who has renounced action through

yoga,

Whose doubt is cut away by knowledge,

And who is possessed of the Self,

Arjuna.

Therefore, having cut away, with your

own sword of knowledge,

This doubt that proceeds from

ignorance and abides in your heart,

Resort to yoga!

Stand up, Arjuna.

* * *

BOOK 5 | The Yoga of Renunciation

Arjuna spoke:

You praise renunciation of actions,

And again You praise yoga, Krishna.

Which one is the better of these two?

Tell this to me definitely.

Teh Blessed Lord spoke:

Both renunciation and the yoga of

action

Lead to incomprable bliss;

Of the two, however, the yoga of

action

Is superior to the renunciation of

action.

He is to be known as the eternal

sannyasi

Who neither hates nor desires,

Who is indifferent to the pairs of

opposites, O Arjuna.

He is easily liberated from bondage.

"Sankhya and yoga are different,"

The childish declare; not the wise.

Even with one of them, practiced

correctly,

One finds the fruit of both.

The place that is attained by the

followers of Sankhya

Is also attained by the followers of

yoga.

Sankhya and yoga are one.

He who perceives this, truly perceives.

Renunciation indeed, O Arjuna,

Is difficult to attain without yoga;

The sage who is disciplined in yoga

Quickly attains Brahman.

He who is devoted to yoga, whose self is

purified,

Whose self is subdued, whose senses

are conquered,

Whose self has become

the self of all beings,

Is not tainted even when acting.

"I do not do anything," thus,

Steadfast in yoga, the knower of truth

should think,

Whether seeing, hearing, touching,

smelling,

Eating, walking, sleeping, breathing.

Talking, excreting, grasping,

Opening the eyes and shutting the

eyes,

Believing

"The senses abide in the objects of the

senses."

Offering his actions to Brahman,

Having abandoned attachment,

He who acts is not tainted by evil

Any more than a lotus leaf by water.

With the body, with the mind, with

the intellect,

Even merely with the senses,

The yogins perform action toward

self-purification,

Having abandoned attachment.

He who is disciplined in yoga, having

abandoned the fruit of action,

Attains steady peace;

The undisciplined one, attached to

fruit,

Is bound by actions prompted by

desire.

Renouncing all actions with his mind,

The embodied one sits happily, as the

ruler

Within the city of nine gates,

Not acting at all, nor causing action.

The Lord does not create

Either the agency (the means of

action) or the actions of the people,

Ot the union of action with its fruit.

Nature, on the other hand, proceeds

(in all this).

The Lord does not receive

Either the evil or the good deeds of

anyone.

Knowledge is enveloped by ignorance.

By it (ignorance) people are deluded.

But for those in whom in this ignorance

of the Self

Is destroyed by knowledge,

That knowledge of theirs

Causes the Supreme to shine like the sun.

They whose minds are absorbed in

that (i.e. the Supreme),

Whose selves are fixed on that,

Whose basis is that, who hold that as

the highest object,

Whose evils have been shaken off by

knowledge, go to the end of rebirth.

The wise see the same (Atman)

In a brahman endowed with wisdom

and cultivation,

In a cow, in an elephant,

And even in a dog or an outcaste.

Even here on earth, rebirth is

conquered

By those whose mind is established in

impartiality.

Brahman is spotless and impartial;

Therefore they are established in

Brahman.

One should not rejoice upon attaining

what is pleasant,

Nor should one shudder upon

encountering what is unpleasant;

With firm intellect, undeluded,

Knowing Brahman, one is established

in Brahman.

He whose self is unattached to external

sensations,

Who finds happiness in the Self,

Whose Self is united with Brahman

through yoga,

Reaches imperishable happiness.

Pleasures born of contact, indeed,

Are wombs (i.e. sources) of pain,

Since they have a beginning and an

end (i.e. are not eternal), Arjuna.

The wise man is content with them.

He who is able to endure here on

earth,

Before liberation from the body,

The agitation that arises from desires

and anger,

Is disciplined; he is a happy man.

He who finds his happiness within,

his delights within,

And his light within,

This yogin attains the bliss of

Brahman, becoming Brahman.

The seers, whose evils have been

destroyed,

Whose doubts have been cut away,

whose selves are restrained,

Who delight in the welfare of all

being,

Attain the bliss of Brahman.

To those ascetics who have cast aside

desire and anger,

Whose thought is controlled,
Who are knowers of the Self,

The bliss of Brahman exists everywhere.

Expelling outside contacts

And fixing the gaze between the two

eyebrows,

Equalizing the inhalation and exhalation,

Moving within the nostrils,

The sage whose highest aim is release;

Whose senses, mind and intellect

are controlled;

From whom desire, fear and anger

have departed,

Is forever liberated.

Having known Me, the enjoyer of

sacrifices and austerities,

The mighty Lord of all the world,

The friend of all creatures,

He (the sage) attains peace.

* * *

Books 1 - 5: Here

Books 6 -10: Here

Books 11 -14: Here

Books 15 -18: Here

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For simmer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, --

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from the hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

- John Keats

The Poets light but Lamps

The Poets light but Lamps -
Themselves - go out -

The Wicks they stimulate -

If vital Light

Inhere as do the Suns -

Each Age a Lens

Disseminating their

Circumference -

- Emily Dickinson

We see - Comparatively -

We see - Comparatively -
The Thing so towering high

We could not grasp its segment

Unaided - Yesterday -

This Morning's finer Verdict -

Makes scarcely worth the toil -

A furrow - Our Cordillera -

Our Apennine - a Knoll -

Perhaps 'tis kindly - done us -

The Anguish - and the loss -

The wrenching - for His Firmament

The Thing belonged to us -

To spare these Striding Spirits

Some Morning of Chagrin -

The waking in a Gnat's - embrace -

Our Giants - further on -

- Emily Dickinson

Grant me, Oh Lord, a sunny mind

Besides the Autumn poets sing
A few prosaic days

A little this side of the snow

And that side of the Haze -

A few incisive Mornings -

A few Ascetic Eves -

Gone - Mr. Bryant's "Golden Rod" -

And Mr. Thomson's "sheaves."

Still, is the bustle in the Brook -

Sealed are the spicy valves -

Mesmeric fingers softly touch

The Eyes of many Elves -

Perhaps a squirrel may remain -

My sentiments to share -

Grant me, Oh Lord, a sunny mind -

Thy windy will to bear!

- Emily Dickinson

Meru

Civilization is hooped together, brought

Under a rule, under the semblance of peace

By manifold illusion; but man's life is thought

And he, despite his terror, cannot cease

Ravening through century after century,

Ravening, raging and uprooting that he may come

Into the desolation of reality:

Egypt and Greece, good-bye, and good-bye, Rome.

Hermits upon Mount Meru or Everest

Caverned in night under the drifted snow,

Or where that snow and winter's dreadful blast

Beat down upon their naked bodies, know

That day brings round the night, that before dawn

His glory and his monuments are gone.

- W.B. Yeats

Breughel's Icarus

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,

The old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position: how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

- W.H. Auden

Here is Breughel's 'Landscape with the fall of Icarus'.

When I consider how my light is spent

Sonnet XVI

When I consider how my light is spent,

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide,

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide

'Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?'

I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, 'God doth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts; who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his state

Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

And post o'er land and ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and wait.'

- John Milton

On Shakespeare, 1630

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones
The labour of an age in piled stones,

Or that his hallowed relics should be hid

Under a star-ypointing pyramid?

Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame,

What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Hast built thyself a live-long monument.

For whilst to th' shame of slow-endeavouring art,

Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart

Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book,

Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,

Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving

Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;

And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie,

That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

- John Milton

Either was the other's mine

Let the bird of loudest lay,

On the sole Arabian tree,

Herald sad and trumpet be:

To whose sound chaste wings obey.

But thou, shrieking harbinger,

Foul precurrer of the fiend

Augur of the fever's end,

To this troop come thou not near.

From this session interdict

Every foul of tyrant wing,

Save the eagle, feathered king:

Keep the obsequy so strict.

Let the priest in surplice white,

That defunctive music can,

Be the death-devining swan,

Lest the requiem lack his right.

And thou, treble-dated crow,

That thy sable gender mak'st

With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st,

'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.

Here the anthem doth commence:

Love and Constancy is dead,

Phoenix and the Turtle fled,

In a mutual flame from hence.

So they loved as love in twain,

Had the essence but in one,

Two distincts, division none:

Number there in love was slain.

Hearts remote, yet not asunder;

Distance and no space was seen

'Twixt this Turtle and his queen;

But in them it were a wonder.

So between them love did shine

That the Turtle saw his right

Flaming in the Phoenix' sight;

Either was the other's mine.

Property was thus appalled

That the self was not the same:

Single natures, double name,

Neither two nor one was called.

Reason in itself confounded

Saw division grow together;

To themselves yet either neither,

Simple were so well compounded,

That it cried 'How true a twain

Seemeth this concordant one:

Love hath reason, Reason none,

If what parts can so remain.'

Whereupon it made this threne

To the Phoenix and the dove,

Co-supremes and stars of love,

As chorus to their tragic scene.

Threnos

Beauty, Truth, and Rarity,

Grace in all simplicity,

Here enclosed, in cinders lie.

Death is now the Phoenix' nest,

And the Turtle's loyal breast

To eternity doth rest.

Leaving no posterity,

"Twas not their infirmity:

It was married chastity.

Truth may seem, but cannot be;

Beauty brag, but 'tis not she:

Truth and Beauty buried be.

To this urn let those repair

That are either true or fair:

For these dead birds sigh a prayer.

- William Shakespeare

Portrait

That from her face of absolute refusal
not one of her great sorrows might fall,

she carries slowly through the tragedies

her features' faded bouquet,

wildly tied and already almost loose;

sometimes a lost smile, like a tuberose,

drops from it wearily and drifts down.

And she goes by with serene indifference,

weary, with the beautiful blind hands

which know that they would never find it,-

and she says fabricated things, in which

fate wavers, contrived, commonplace,

and she gives it her own soul's meaning,

so that it breaks out like something fabulous,

like the screaming of a stone -

and she lets, with high uplifted chin,

all those words drift down again,

going on without them; for not a one

befits that aching reality,

her sole possession,

which, like a footless vessel,

she must hold out high above her fame

and the way each evening goes.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

(Translated by Edward Snow)

a handful of inwardness

The Bowl of Roses

You've seen caged anger flare, seen two boys

roll themselves up into a knot

of pure hatred, writhing on the ground

like an animal attacked by bees;

you've seen actors, giant exaggerators,

careening horses crashing down,

flinging their eyes away, baring their teeth

as if their skulls were peeling through their mouths.

But now you see how such things vanish:

for before you stands the full bowl of roses,

which is unforgettable, and wholly filled

with that utmost of being and bending,

of offering up, beyond power to give, of presence,

that might be ours - our utmost as well.

Life lived in quietness, endless opening out,

space being used without space being taken

from the space adjacent things diminish,

outline just hinted at, like ground left blank

and pure withinness, much so strangely soft

and self-illuminating - out to the edge:

do we know anything like this?

And like this: that a feeling arises,

bacause flower-petals touch flower-petals?

And this: that one opens like an eye,

and beneath it like eyelid after eyelid,

all tightly closed, as if through tenfold sleep

they might curb an inner power of sight.

And this above all: that through these petals

light must pass. From a thousand skies

they slowly filter out that drop of darkness

in whose fiery glow the tangled mass

of stamens bestirs itself and grows erect.

And the movement in the roses, look:

gestures from vibrations so minute

that they'd remain invisible, did not

their rays fan into the universe.

Look at that white one, blissfully opened

and standing there amidst its spread of petals

like a Venus balanced on her seashell;

and the blushing one, which as if flustered

turns across to one that is cool,

and how the cool one aloofly withdraws,

and how that cold one stands, wrapped in itself,

among the open ones, that shed everything.

And what they shed: how it can be

at once light and heavy, a cloak, a burden,

a wing and a mask - it all depends-

and how they shed it: as before a lover.

What can't they be: was that yellow one,

that lies there hollow and open, not the rind

of a fruit in which the very same yellow,

intenser, orange-redder, was juice?

And was mere opening too much for this one,

since touched by air its nameless pink

has taken on the bitter aftertaste of lilac?

And that cambric one, is it not a dress

in which the shift still clings, soft and breath-warm,

both of them cast off together

in the morning shadows of the old woodland pool?

And this one, opalescent porcelain,

fragile, a shallow china cup

and full of tiny bright butterflies,-

and that one, containing nothing but itself.

And aren't all that way: simply self-containing,

if self-containing means: to transform the world outside

and wind and rain and the patience of spring

and guilt and restlessness and muffled fate

and the darkness of the evening earth

out to the roaming and flying and fleeing of the clouds

and the vague influence of distant stars

into a handful of inwardness.

Now it lies carefree in these open roses.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

(Translated by Edward Snow)

both expansiveness and containment

Seamus Heaney on W.B. Yeats:

"Reading Yeats, we are under the sway of a voice that offers both expansiveness and containment, and this is as true of the early work as it is of a magnificient late set-piece such as 'A Dialogue of Self and Soul.' The expansiveness arises from a confidence that the mind is its own place and within it great distances can be imagined and traversed at will. The containment is present as a sensation of strong emotional and intellectual pressure coming up against formal limits and straining within them."

Beautiful Lofty Things

Beautiful lofty things: O'Leary's noble head;

My father upon the Abbey stage, before him a raging crowd:

'This Land of Saints,' and then as the applause died out,
'Of plaster Saints'; his beautiful mischievous head thrown

back.

Standish O'Grady supporting himself between the tables

Speaking to a srunken audience high nonsensical words;

Augusta Gregory seated at her ormolu table,

Her eightieth winter approaching: 'Yesterday he threatened

my life.

I told him that nightly from six to seven I sat at this table,

The blinds drawn up'; Maud Gonne at Howth station

waiting a train,

Pallas Athene in that straight back and arrogant head:

All the Olympians; a thing never known again.

- W.B. Yeats

Myself must I remake

An Acre of Grass

Picture and book remain,
An acre of green grass

For air and exercise.

Now strength of body goes;

Midnight, an old house,

Where nothing stirs but a mouse.

My temptation is quiet

Here at life's end

Neither loose imagination,

Nor the mill of the mind

Consuming its rag and bone,

Can make the truth known.

Grant me an old man's frenzy,

Myself must I remake

Till I am Timon and Lear

Or that William Blake

Who beat upon the wall

Till truth obeyed his call;

A mind Michael Angelo knew

That can pierce the clouds,

Or inspired by frenzy

Shake the dead in their shrouds;

Forgotten else by mankind

An old man's eagle mind.

- W.B. Yeats

He set his chisel to the hardest stone

Ego Dominus Tuus

Hic.

On the grey sand beside the shallow stream

Under your old wind-beaten tower, where still

A lamp burns on beside the open book

That Michael Robartes left, you walk in the moon,

And, though you have passed the best of life, still trace,

Enthralled by the unconquerable delusion,

Magical shapes.

Ille.

By the help of an image

I call to my own opposite, summon all

That I have handled least, least looked upon.

Hic.

And I would find myself and not an image.

Ille.

That is our modern hope, and by its light

We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind

And lost the old nonchalance of the hand;

Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush,

We are but critics, or but half create,

Timid, entangled, empty and abashed,

Lacking the countenance of our friends.

Hic.

And yet

The chief imagination of Christendom,

Dante Alighieri, so utterly found himself

That he has made that hollow face of his

More plain to the mind's eye than any face

But that of Christ.

Ille.

And did he find himself

Or was the hunger that had made it hollow

A hunger for the apple on the bough

Most out of reach? and is that spectral image

The man that Lapo and that Guido knew?

I think he fashioned from his opposite

An image that might have been a stony face

Staring upon a Bedouin's horse-hair roof

From doored and windowed cliff, or half upturned

Among the coarse grass and the camel-dung.

He set his chisel to the hardest stone.

Being mocked by Guido for his lecherous life,

Derided and deriding, driven out

To climb that stair and eat that bitter bread,

He found the unpersuadable justice, he found

The most exalted lady loved by a man.

Hic.

Yet surely there are men who have made their art

Out of no tragic war, lovers of life,

Impulsive men that look for happiness

And sing when they have found it.

Ille.

No, not sing,

For those that love the world serve it in action,

grow rich, popular and full of influence,

And should they paint or write, still it is action:

The struggle of the fly in marmalade.

The rhetorician would deceive his neighbours,

The sentimentalist himself; while art

Is but a vision of reality.

What portion in the world can the artist have

Who has awakened from the common dream

But dissipation and despair?

Hic.

And yet

No one denies to Keats love of the world;

Remember his deliberate happiness.

Ille.

His art is happy, but who knows his mind?

I see a schoolboy when I think of him,

With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window,

For certainly he sank into his grave

His senses and his heart unsatisfied,

And made - being poor, ailing and ignorant,

Shut out from all the luxury of the world,

The coarse-bred son of a livery-stable keeper -

Luxuriant song.

Hic.

Why should you leave the lamp

Burning alone beside an open book,

And trace these characters upon the sands?

A style is found by sedentary toil

And by the imitation of great masters.

Ille.

Because I seek an image, not a book.

Those men that in their writings are most wise

Own nothing but their blind, stupefied hearts.

I call to the mysterious one who yet

Shall walk the wet sands by the edge of the stream

And look most like me, being indeed my double,

And prove of all imaginable things

The most unlike, being my anti-self,

And, standing by these characters, disclose

All that I seek; and whisper it as though

He were afraid the birds, who cry aloud

Their momentary cries before it is dawn,

Would carry it away to blasphemous men.

- W.B. Yeats

He made the world to be a grassy road

The Rose of the World

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?

For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,

Mournful that no new wonder may betide,

Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,

And Usna's children died.

We and the labouring world are passing by:

Amid men's souls, that waver and give place

Like the pale waters in their wintry race,

Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,

Lives on this lonely face.

Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:

Before you were, or any hearts to beat,

Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;

He made the world to be a grassy road

Before her wandering feet.

- W.B. Yeats

for peace comes dropping slow

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattle made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping

slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket

sings;

There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart's core.

- W.B. Yeats

time is a tree(this life one leaf)

as freedom is a breakfastfood
or truth can live with right and wrong

or molehills are from mountains made

-long enough and just so long

will being pay the rent of seem
and genius please the talentgang
and water most encourage flame

as hatracks into peachtrees grow
or hopes dance best on bald men's hair

and every finger is a toe

and any courage is a fear

-long enough and just so long

will the impure think all things pure

and hornets wail by children stung

or as the seeing are the blind

and robins never welcome spring

nor flatfolk prove their world is round

nor dingsters die at break of dong

and common's rare and millstones float

-long enough and just so long

tomorrow will not be too late

worms are the words but joy's the voice

down shall go which and up come who

breasts will be breasts thighs will be thighs

deeds cannot dream what dreams can do

-time is a tree(this life one leaf)

but love is the sky and i am for you

just so long and long enough

- e.e. cummings

Notes Toward A Supreme Fiction

And for what, except for you, do I feel love?

Do I press the extremest book of the wisest man

Close to me, hidden in me day and night?

In the uncertain light of single, certain truth,

Equal in living changingness to the light

In which I meet you, in which we sit at rest,

For a moment in the central of our being,

The vivid transparence that you bring is peace.

It Must Be Abstract

Begin, ephebe by perceiving the idea

Of this invention, this invented world,

The inconceivable idea of the sun.

You must become an ignorant man again

And see the sun again with an ignorant eye

And see it clearly in the idea of it.

Never suppose an inventing mind as source

Of this idea nor for that mind compose

A voluminous master folded in his fire.

How clean the sun when seen in its idea,

Washed in the remotest cleanliness of a heaven

That has expelled us and our images. . .

The death of one god is the death of all.

Let purple Phoebus lie in umber harvest,

Let Phoebus slumber and die in autumn umber,

Phoebus is dead, ephebe. But Phoebus was

A name for something that never could be named.

There was a project for the sun and is.

There is a project for the sun. The sun

Must bear no name, gold flourisher, but be

In the difficulty of what it is to be.

It is the celestial ennui of apartments

That sends us back to the first idea, the quick

Of this invention; and yet so poisonous

Are the ravishments of truth, so fatal to

The truth itself, the first idea becomes

The hermit in a poet's metaphors,

Who comes and goes and comes and goes all day.

May there be an ennui of the first idea?

What else, prodigious scholar, should there be?

The monastic man is an artist. The philosopher

Appoints man's place in music, say, today.

But the priest desires. The philosopher desires.

And not to have is the beginning of desire.

To have what is not is its ancient cycle.

It is desire at the end of winter, when

It observes the effortless weather turning blue

And sees the myosotis on its bush.

Being virile, it hears the claendar hymn.

It knows that what it has is what is not

And throws it away like a thing of another time,

As morning throws off stale moonlight and shabby sleep.

III

The poem refreshes life so that we share,

For a moment, the first idea . . . It satisfies

Belief in an immaculate beginning

And sends us, winged by an unconscious will,

To an immaculate end. We move between these points:

From the ever-early candor to its late plural

And the candor of them is the strong exhilaration

Of what we feel from what we think, of thought

Beating in the heart, as if blood newly came.

An elixir, an excitation, a pure power.

The poem, through candor, brings back a power again

That gives a candid kind to everything.

We say: At night an Arabian in my room

With his damned hoobla-hoobla-hoobla-how,

Inscribes a primitive astronomy

Across the unscrawled fores the future casts

And throws his stars around the floor. By day

The wood-dove used to chant his hoobla-hoo

And still the grossest iridescence of ocean

Howls hoo and rises and howls hoo and falls.

Life's nonsense pierces us with strange relation.

The first idea was not our own. Adam

In Eden was the father of Descartes

And Eve made air the mirror of herself,

Of her sones and of her daughters. They found

themselves

In heaven as in a glass; a second earth;

And in the earth itself they found a green -

The inhabitants of a very varnished green.

But the first idea was not to shape the clouds

In imitation. The clouds preceded us.

There was a muddy centre before we breathed.

There was a myth before the myth began,

Venerable and articulate and complete.

From this the poem springs: that we live in a place

That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves

And hard it is in spite of blazoned days.

We are the mimics. Clouds are pedagogues.

The air is not a mirror but bare board,

Coulisse bright-dark, tragic chiaroscuro

And comic color of the rose, in which

Absymal instruments make sounds like pips

Of the sweeping meanings that we add to them.

The lion roars at the enraging desert,

Reddens the sand with his red-colored noise,

Defies red emptiness to evolve his match,

Master by foot and jaws and by the mane,

Most supple challenger. The elephant

Breaches the darkness of Ceylon with blares,

The glitter-goes on surface of tanks,

Shattering velvetest far-away. The bear,

The ponderous cinnamon, snarls in his mountain

At summer thunder and sleeps through winter snow.

But you, ephebe, look from your attic window,

Your mansard with a rented piano. You lie

In silence upon your bed. You clutch the corner

Of the pillow in your hand. You writhe and press

A bitter utterance from your writhing, dumb,

Yet voluble of dumb violence. You look

Across the roods as sigil and as ward

And in your centre mark them and are cowed . . .

These are the heroic children whom time breeds

Against the first idea - to lash the lion,

Caparison elephants, teach bears to juggle.

Not to be realized because not to

Be seen, not to be loved nor hated because

Not to be realized. Weather by Franz Hals,

Brushed up by brushy winds in brushy clouds,

Wetted by blue, colder for white. Not to

Be spoken to, without a roof, without

First fruits, without the virginal of birds,

The dark-blown ceinture loosened, not relinquished.

Gay is, gay was, the gay forsythia

And yellow, yellow thins the Northern blue.

Without a name and nothing to be desired,

If only imagined but imagined well.

My house has changed a little in the sun.

The fragrance of the magnolias comes close,

False flick, flase form, but falseness close to kin.

It must be visible or invisible,

Invisible or visible or both:

A seeing and unseeing in the eye.

The weather and the giant of the weather,

Say the weather, the mere weather, the mere air:

An abstraction blooded, as a man by thought.

VII

It feels good as it is without the giant,

A thinker of the first idea. Perhaps

The truth depends on a walk around a lake,

A composing as the body tires, a stop

To see hepatica, a stop to watch

A definition growing certain and

A wait within that certainty, a rest

In the swags of pine-trees bordering the lake.

Perhaps there are times of inherent excellence,

As when the cock crows on the left and all

Is well, incalculable balances,

As which a kind of Swiss perfection comes

And a familiar music of the machine

Sets up its Schwarmerei, not balances

That we achieve, but balances that happen,

As a man and woman meet and love forthwith.

Perhaps there are moments of awakening,

Extreme, fortuitous, personal, in which

We more than awaken, sit on the edge of sleep,

As on an elevation, and behold

The academies like structures in a mist.

VIII

Can we compose a castle-fortress-home,

Even with the help of Viollet-le-Duc,

And set the MacCullough there as major man?

The first idea is an imagined thing.

The pensive giant prone in violet space

May be the MacCullough, an expedient,

Logos and logic, crystal hypothesis,

Incipit and a form to speak the word

And every latent double in the word,

Beau linguist. But the MacCullough is MacCullough.

It does not follow that major man is man.

If MacCullough himself lay lounging by the sea,

Drowned in its washes, reading in the sound,

About the thinker of the first idea,

He might take habit, whether from wave or phrase,

Or power of the wave, or deepened speech,

Or a leaner being, moving in on him,

Of greater aptitude and apprehension,

As if the waves at last were never broken,

As if the language suddenly, with ease,

Said things it had laboriously spoken.

The romantic intoning, the declaimed clairvoyance

Are parts of apotheosis, appropriate

And of its nature, the idiom thereof.

They differ from reason's click-clack, its applied

Enflashings. But apotheosis is not

The origin of the major man. He comes,

Compact in invincible foils, from reason,

Lighted at midnight by the studious eye,

Swaddled in revery, the object of

The hum of thoughts evaded in the mind,

Hidden from other thoughts, he that reposes

On a breast forever precious for that touch,

For whom the good of April falls tenderly,

Falls down, the cock-birds calling at the time.

My dame, sing for this person accurate songs.

He is and may be but oh! he is, he is,

This foundling of the infected past, so bright,

So moving in the manner of his hand.

Yet look not at his colored eyes. Give him

No names. Dismiss him from your images.

The hot of him is purest in the heart.

The major abstraction is the idea of man

And major man is its exponent, abler

In the abstract than the singular.

More fecund as principle than particle,

Happy fecundity, flor-abundant force,

In being more than an exception, part,

Though an heroic part, of the commonal.

the major abstraction is the commonal,

The inanimate, difficult visage. Who is it?

What rabbi, grown furious with human wish,

What chieftain, walking by himself, crying

Most miserable, most victorious,

Does not see these separate figures one by one,

And yet see only one, in his old coat,

His slouching pantaloons, beyond the town,

Looking for what was, where it used to be?

Cloudless the morning. It is he. The man

In that old coat, those sagging pantaloons,

It is of him, ephebe, to make, to confect

The final elegance, not to console

Nor sanctify, but plainly to propound.

It Must Change

The old seraph, parcel-gilded, among violets

Inhaled the appointed odor, while the doves

Rose up like phantoms from chronologies.

The Italian girls wore jonquils in their hair

And these the seraph saw, had seen long since,

In the bandeaux of the mothers, would see again.

The bees come booming as if they had never gone,

As if hyacinths had never gone. We say

This changes and that changes. Thus the constant

Violets, doves, girls, bees and hyacinths

Are inconstant objects of inconstant cause

In a universe of inconstancy. This means

Night-blue is an inconstant thing. The seraph

Is satyr in Saturn, according to his thoughts.

It means the distaste we feel for this withered scene

Is that it has not changed enough. It remains,

It is a repetition. The bees come booming

As if - The pigeons clatter in the air.

An erotic perfume, half of the body, half

Of an obvious acid is sure what it intends

And the booming is blunt, not broken in subtleties.

The President ordains the bee to be

Immortal. The President ordains. But does

The body lift its heavy wing, take up,

Again, an inexhaustible being, rise

Over the loftiest antagonist

To drone the green phrases of its juvenal?

Why should the bee recapture a lost blague,
Find a deep echo in a horn and buzz

The bottomless trophy, new hornsman after old?

The President has apples on the table

And barefoot servants round him, who adjust

The curtains to a metaphysical t

And the banners of the nation flutter, burst

On the flag-poles in a red-blue dazzle, whack

At the halyards. Why, then, when in golden fury

Spring vanishes the scraps of winter, why

Should there be a question of returning or

Of death in memory's dream? Is spring a sleep?

This warmth is for lovers at last accomplishing

Their love, this beginning, not resuming, thus

Booming and booming of the new-come bee.

III

The great statue of the General Du Puy

Rested immobile, though neighbouring catafalques

Bore off the residents of its noble Place.

The right, uplifted foreleg of the horse

Suggested that, at the final funeral,

The music halted and the horse stood still.

On Sundays, lawyers in their promenades

Approached this strongle-heightened effigy

To study the past, and doctors, having bathed

Themselves with care, sought out the nerveless frame

Of a suspension, a permanence, so rigid

That it made the General a bit absurd,

Changed his true flesh to an inhuman bronze.

There never had been, never could be, such

A man. The lawyers disbelieved, the doctors

Said that as keen, illustrious ornament,

As a setting for geraniums, the General,

The very Place Du Puy, in fact, belonged

Among our more vestgial states of mind.

Nothing had happened because nothing had changed.

Yet the General was rubbish in the end.

Two things of opposite natures seem to depend

On one another, as a man depends

On a woman, day on night, the imagined

On the real. This is the origin of change.

Winter and spring, cold copulars, embrace

And forth the particulars of rapture come.

Music falls on the silence like a snese,

A passion that we feel, not understand.

Morning and afternoon are clasped together

And North and South are an intrinsic couple

And sun and rain a plural, like two lovers

That walk away as one in the greenest body.

In solitude the trumpets of solitude

Are not of another solitude resounding;

A little string speaks for a crowd of voices.

The partaker partakes of that which changes him.

The child that touches takes character from the thing,

The body, it touches. The captain and his men

Are one and the sailor and the sea are one.

Follow after, O my companion, my fellow, my self,

Sister and solace, brother and delight.

On a blue island in a sky-wide water

The wild orange trees continued to bloom and to bear.,

Long after the planter's death. A few lines remained,

Where his house had fallen, three scraggy trees

weighted

With garbled green. These were the planter's turquoise

And his orange blotches, these were his zero green,

A green baked greener in the greenest sun.

These were his beaches, his sea-myrtles in

White sand, his patter of the long sea-slushes.

There was an island beyond him on which rested,

An island to the South, on which rested like

A mountain, a pineapple pungent as Cuban summer.

And la-bas, la-bas the cool bananas grew,

Hung heavily on the great banana tree.

Which pierces clouds and bends on half the world.

He thought often of the land from which he came,

How that whole country was a melon, pink

If seen rightly and yet a possible red.

An unaffected man in a negative light

Could not have borne his labor nor have died

Sighing that he should leave the banjo's twang.

Bethou me, said sparrow, to the cracked blade,

And you, and you, bethou me as you blow,

When in my coppice you behold me be.

Ah, ke! the bloody wren, the felon jay,

Ke-ke, the jug-throated robin pouring out,

Bethou, bethou, bethou me in my glade.

There was such idiot minstrelsy in rain,

So many clappers going without bells,

That these bethous compose a heavenly gong.

One voice repeating, one tireless chorister,

The phrases of a single phrase, ke-ke,

A single text, granite monotony,

On sole face, like a photograph of fate,

Glass-blower's destiny, bloodless episcopus,

Eye without lid, mind without any dream -

These are of minstrels lacking minstrelsy,

Of an earth in which the first leaf is the tale

Of leaves, in which the sparrow is a bird

Of stone, that never changes. Bethou him, you

And you, bethou him and bethou. It is

A sound like any other. It will end.

VII

After a lustre of the moon, we say

We have not the need of any paradise,

We have not the need of any seducing hymn.

It is true. Tonight the lilacs magnify

The easy passion, the ever-ready love

Of the lover that lies within us and we breathe

An odor evoking nothing, absolute.

We encounter in the dead middle of the night

The purple odor, the abundant bloom.

The lover sighs as for accessible bliss,

Which he can take within him on his breath,

Possess in his heart, conceal and nothing known

For easy passion and ever-ready love

Are of our earthy birth and here and now

And where we live and everywhere we live,

As in the top-cloud of a May night-evening,

As in the courage of the ignorant man,

Who chants by book, in the heat of the scholar, who

writes

The book, hot for another accessible bliss:

The fluctuations of certainty, the change

Of degrees of perception in the scholar's dark.

VIII

On her trip around the world, Nanzia Nunzio

Confronted Ozymandias. She went

Alone and like a vestal long-prepared.

I am the spouse. She took her necklace off

And laid it in the sand. As I am, I am

The spouse. She opened her stone-stidded belt.

I am the spouse, divested of bright gold,

The spouse beyond emerald or amethyst,

Beyond the burning body that I bear.

I am the woman stripped more nakedly

Than nakedness, standing before an inflexible

Order, saying I am the contemplated spouse.

Speak to me that, which spoken, will array me

In its own only precious ornament.

Set on me the spirit's diamond coronal.

Clothe me entire in the final filament,

So that I tremble with such love so known

And myself am precious for your perfecting.

Then Ozymandias said the spouse, the bride

Is never naked. A fictive covering

Weaves always glistening from the heart and mind.

The poem goes from the poet's gibberish to

The gibberish of the vulgate and back again.

Does it move to and fro or is it of both

At once? Is it a luminous flittering

Or the concentration of a cloudy day?

Is there a poem that never reaches words

And once that chaffers the time away?

Is the poem both peculiar and general?

There's a meditation there, in which there seems

To be an evasion, a thing not apprehended or

Not apprehended well. Does the poet

Evade us, as in a senseless element?

Evade, this hot, dependent orator,

The spokespan at our bluntest barriiers,

Exponent by a form of speech, the speaker

Of a speech only a little of the tongue?

It is the gibberih of the vulgate that he seeks.

He tries by a peculiar speech to speak

The peculiar potency of the general,

To compound the imagination's Latin with

The lingua franca et jocundissima.

A bench was his catalepsy, Theatre

Of Trope. He sat in the park. The water of

The lake was full of artificial things,

Like a page of music, like an upper air,

Like a momentary color, in which swans

Were seraphs, were saints, were changing essences.

The west wind was the music, the motion, the force

To which the swans curveted, a will to change,

A will to make iris frettings on the blank.

There was a will to change, a necessitous

And present way, a presentation, a kind

Of volatile world, too constant to be denied,

The eye of a vagabond in metaphor

That catches our own. The casual is not

Enough. The freshness of transformation is

The freshness of a world. It is our own,

It is ourselves, the freshness of ourselves,

And that necessity and that presentation

Are rubbings of a glass in which we peer.

Of these beginnings, gay and green, propose

The suitable amours. Time will write them down.

It Must Give Pleasure

To sing jubilas at exact, accustomed times,

To be crested and wear the mane of a multitude

And so, as part, to exult, with its great throat.

To speak of joy and to sing of it, borne on

The shoulders of joyous men, to feel the heart

That is the common, the bravest fundament.

This is a facile exercise. Jerome

Begat the tubas and the fire-wind strings,

The golden fingers picking dark-blue air:

For companies of voices moving there,

To find of sound the bleakest ancestor,

To find of light a music issuing

Whereon it falls in more than sensual mode.

But the difficultest rigor is forthwith,

On the image of what we see, to catch from that

Irrational moment its unreasoning,

As when the sun comes rising, when the sea

Clears deeply, when the moon hangs on the wall

Of heaven-haven. These are not things transformed.

Yet we are shaken by them as if they were.

We reason about them with a later reason.

The blue woman, linked and lacquered, at her window

Did not desire that feathery argentines

Should be cold silver, neither that frothy clouds

Should foam, be foamy waves, should move like them,

Nor that the sexual blossoms should repose

Without their fierce addictions, nor that the heat

Of summer, growing fragrant in the night,

Should strengthen her abortive dreams and take

In sleep its natural form. It was enough

Fir her that she remembered: the argentines

Of spring come to their places in the grape leaves

To cool their ruddy pulses; the frothy clouds

Are nothing but frothy clouds; the frothy blooms

Waste without puberty; and afterward,

When the harmonious heat of August pines

Enters the room, it drowses and is the night.

It was enough for her that she remembered.

The blue woman looked and from her window named

The corals of the dogwood, cold and clear,

Cold, coldly delineating, being real,

Clear and, except for the eye, without intrusion.

III

A lasting visage in a lasting bush,

A face of stone in an unending red,

Red-emerald, red-slitted-blue, a face of slate,

An ancient forehead hung with heavy hair,

The channel slots of rain, the red-rose-red

And weathered and the ruby-water-worn,

The vines around the throadt, the shapeless lips,

The frown like serpents basking on the brow,

The spent feeling leaving nothing of itself,

Red-in-red repetitions never going

Away, a little rusty, a little rouged,

A little roughened and ruder, a crown

The eye could not escape, a red renown

Blowing itself upon the tedious ear.

An effulgence faded, dull cornelian

Too venerably used. That might have been.

It might and might have been. But as it was,

A dead shepherd brought tremendous chords from hell

And bade the sheep carouse. Or so they said.

Children in love with them brought early flowers

And scattered them about, no two alike.

We reason of these things with later reason

And we make of what we see, what we see clearly

And have seen, a place dependent on ourselves.

There was a mystic marriage in Catawba,

At noon it was on the mid-day of the year

Between a great captain and the maiden Bawda.

This was their ceremonial hymn: Anon

We loved but would no marriage make. Anon

The one refused the other one to take,

Foreswore the sipping of the marriage wine.

Each must the other take not for his high,

His puissant front nor for her subtle sound,

The shoo-shoo-shoo of secret cymbals round.

Each must the other take as sign, short sign

To stop the whirlwind, balk the elements.

The great captain loved the ever-hill Catawba

And therefore married Bawda, whom he found there,

And Bawda loved the captain as she loved the sun.

They married well because the marriage-place

Was what they loved. It was neither heaven nor hell.

They were love's characters come face to face.

We drank Meursault, ate lobster Bombay with mango

Chutney. Then the Canon Aspirin declaimed

Of his sister, in what a sensible ecstasy

She lived in her house. She had two daughters, one

Of four, and one of seven, whom she dressed

The way a painter of pauvred color paints.

But still she painted them, appropriate to

Their poverty, a gray-blue yellowed out

With ribbon, a rigid statement of them, white,

With Sunday pearls, her widow's gaiety.

She hid them under simple names. She held

Them closelier to her by rejecting dreams.

The words they spoke were voices that she heard.

She looked at them and saw them as they were

And what she felt fought off the barest phrase.

The Canon Aspirin, having said these things,

Reflected, humming an outline of a fugue

Of praise, a conjugation done by choirs.

Yet when her children slept, his sister herself

Demanded of sleep, in the excitements of silence

Only the unmuddled self of sleep, for them.

When at long midnight the Canon came to sleep

And normal things had yawned themselves away,

The nothingness was a nakedness, a point,

Beyond which fact could not progress as fact.

Thereon the learning of the man conceived

Once more night's pale illuminations, gold

Beneath, far underneath, the surface of

His eye and audible in the mountain of

His ear, the very material of his mind.

So that he was the ascending wings he saw

And moved on them in orbits' outer stars

Descending to the children's bed, on which

They lay. Forth then with huge pathetic force

Straight to the utmost crown of night he flew.

The nothingness was a nakedness, a point

Beyond which thought could not progress as thought.

He had to choose. But it was not a choice

Between excluding things. It was not a choice

Between, but of. He chose to include the things

That in each other are included, the whole,

The complicate, the amassing harmony.

VII

He imposes orders as he thinks of them,
As the fox and snake do. It is a brave affair.

Next he builds capitols and in their corridors,

Whiter than wax, sonorous, fme as it is,

He establishes statues of reasonable men,

Who surpassed the most literate owl, the most erudite

Of elephants. But to impose is not

To discover. To discover an order as of

A season, to discover summer and know it,

To discover winter and know it well, to find,

Not to impose, not to have reasoned at all,

Out of nothing to have come on major weather,

It is possible, possible, possible. It must

Be possible. It must be that in time

The real will from its crude compoundings come,

Seeming, at first, a beast disgorged, unlike,

Warmed by a desperate milk. To find the real,

To be stripped of every fiction except one,

The fiction of an absolute - Angel,

Be silent in your luminous cloud and hear

The luminous melody of proper sound.

VIII

What am I to believe? If the angel in his cloud,

Serenly gazing at the violet abyss,

Plucks on his strings to pluck abysmal glory,

Leaps downward through evening's revelations, and

On his spredden wings, needs nothing but deep space,

Forgets the gold centre, the golden destiny,

Grows warm in the motionless motion of his flight,

Am I that imagine this angel less satisfied?

Are the wings his, the lapis-haunted air?

Is it he or is it I that experience this?

Is it I then that keep saying there is an hour

Filled with expressible bliss, in which I have

No need, am happy, forget need's golden hand,

Am satisfied without solacing majesty,

And if there is an hour there is a day,

There is a month, a year, there is a time

In which majesty is a mirror of the self:

I have not but I am and as I am, I am.

These external regions, what do we fill them with

Except reflections, the escapades of death,

Cinderella fulfilling herself beneath the roof?

Whistle aloud, too weedy wren. I can

Do all that angels can. I enjoy like them,

Like men besides, like men in light secluded,

Enjoying angels. Whistle, forced bugler,

That bugles for the mate, nearby the nest,

Cock bugler, whistle and bugle and stop just short,

Red robin, stop in your preludes, practicing

Mere repetitions. These things at least comprise

An occupation, an exercise, a work,

A thing final in itself and, therefore, good:

One of the vast repetitions final in

Themselves and, therefore, good, the going round

And round and round, the merely going round,

Until merely going round is a final good,

The way wine comes at a table in a wood.

And we enjoy like men, the way a leaf

Above the table spins its constant spin,

So that we look at it with pleasure, look

At it spinning its eccentric measure. Perhaps,

The man-hero is not the exceptional monster,

But he that of repetition is most master.

Fat girl, terrestrial, my summer, my night,

How is it I find you in difference, see you there

In a moving contour, a change not quite completed?

You are familiar yet an aberration.

Civil, madam, I am, but underneath

A tree, this unprovoked sensation requires

That I should name you flatly, wate no words,

Check your evasions, hold you to yourself.

Even so when I think of you as strong or tired,

Bent over work, anxious, content, alone,

You remain the more than natural figure. You

Become the soft-footed phantom, the irrational

Distortion, however fragrant, however dear.

That's it: the more than rational distortion,

The fiction that results from feeling. Yes, that.

They will get it straight one day at the Sorbonne.

We shall return at twilight from the lecture

Pleased that the irrational is rational,

Until flicked by feeling, in a gildered street,

I call you by name, my green, my fluent mundo.

You will have stopped revolving except in crystal.

*****

Soldier, there is a war between the mind

And sky, between thought and day and night. It is

For that the poet is always in the sun,

Patches the moon together in his room

To his Virgilian cadences, up down,

Up down. It is a war that never ends.

Yet it depends on yours. The two are one.

They are a plural, a right and left, a pair,

Two parallels that meet if only in

The meeting of their shadows or that meet

In a book in a barrack, a letter from Malay.

But your war ends. And after it you return

With six meats and twelve wines or else without

To walk another room . . . Monsieur and comrade,

The soldier is poor without the poet's lines,

His petty syllabi, the sounds that stick,

Inevitably modulating, in the blood.

And war for war, each has its gallant kind.

How simply the fictive hero becomes the real;

How gladly with proper words the soldier dies,

If he must, or lives on the bread of faithful speech.

- Wallace Stevens