James Merrill - The Octopus lyrics

There are many monsters that a gla**en surface Restrains. And none more sinister Than vision asleep in the eye's tight translucence. Rarely it seeks now to unloose Its diamonds. Having divined how drab a prison The purest mortal tissue is, Rarely it wakes. Unless, coaxed out by lusters Extraordinary, like the octopus From the gloom of its tank half-swimming half-drifting Toward anything fair, a handkerchief Or child's face dreaming near the gla**, the writher Advances in a godlike wreath Of its own wrath. Chilled by such fragile reeling A hundred blows of a boot-heel Shall not quell, the dreamer wakes and hungers. Percussive pulses, drum or gong, Build in his skull their loud entrancement, Volutions of a Hindu dance. His hands move clumsily in the first conventional Gestures of a**ent. He is willing to undergo the volition and fervor Of many fleshlike arms, observe These in their holiness of indirection Destroy, adore, evolve, reject— Till on gla** rigid with his own seizure At length the s**ing j**els freeze.