Here we stand before the temporal world,
And whether we care to cast our minds
Or shiver from our words all that refutes
The clarity of thought…
Whether we wish to deflect the rudiments of source
Bare ba*tard brats in summing up the whole…
These things I do not know.
Words have been to me like steps
Revolving and revolving in one cell.
Perhaps others have felt the limits of the pendulum,
Looking to the vast confines of night,
And conscious only of the narrow head,
The brief skull imminent of life,
Gray granules that, like Time, run through the hours.
Caesar walked quietly in his garden.
Two scribes walked gravely by his side.
The smooth pink marble of the fluted column pa**ed
Reminded him of warm wine from the grapes,
The glitter of a spear dropped carelessly,
And caught by a hand quicker than he could see
Its slanting fall,
Reminded him of shallow eyes that glinted
As he pa**ed between two worlds, their own and his.
His thoughts tended toward irrelevance,
But his words cut out the veriest patterns
Of an eastern drive toward the steeples of far Babylon.