Nathalia Crane

Let go the lure The striving to unmake; Behold the truth Whenever heart may ache There is a glory In a great mistake.

Said the tiger to the lily, Said the viper to the rose, Let us marry so our children May attain the double pose. With a feline half a flower — With the attar in the asp We could institute a slaughter That would make a planet gasp.

Finally she faltered; Saw at last, forsooth, Every gaudy color Is a bit of truth. Then the gates were opened; Miracles were seen; That instructed damsel Donned a gown of green; Wore it in a churchyard, All arrayed with care; And a painted rainbow Shone above her there.

I linger on the flathouse roof, the moonlight is divine. But my heart is all aflutter like the washing on the line.

A thousand ardent oilers swung the long spout 'twixt their nods, And tried to glimpse a meaning in the challenge of the gods. And then one night there landed on a Mineola swale A plane that looked like pewter, with a carrier of mail. Its wings were tinged like tea-box skins, each truss of shadow gray, Its cabin but an alcove slung beneath a metal ray. The Spirit of St. Louis was inscribed upon the lee; It came from out a province that had never seen the sea.

A single-motored miracle, a lead mine on each flank; Below a shadow swept and awed the hundred-fathom bank.

The sun shall shine in ages yet to be, The musing moon illumine pastures dim, And afterwards a new nativity For all who slept the dreamless interim.

The sign work of the Orient it runneth up and down; The Talmud stalks from right to left, a rabbi in a gown; The Roman rolls from left to right from Maytime unto May; But the gods shake up their symbols in an absent-minded way. Their language runs to circles like the language of the eyes, Emphasised by strange dilations with little panting sighs.

The very serpents bite their tails; the bees forget to sting, For a language so celestial setteth up a wondering. And the touch of absent mindedness is more than any line, Since direction counts for nothing when the gods set up a sign.

The world is growing gentle, But few know what she owes To the understanding lily And the judgment of the rose.

When you return, the youngest of the seers, Released from fetters of ancestral pose, There will be beauty waiting down the years — Revisions of the ruby and the rose.

He found the harem filled with rocking maids Surrendered to the orgies of the sob.

Across the downs a hummingbird Came dipping through the bowers, He pivoted on emptiness To scrutinize the flowers.

Great is the rose That challenges the crypt, And quotes milleniums Against the grave.

He'll carry me off, I know that he will, For his hair is exceedingly red; And the only thing that occurs to me Is to dutifully shiver in bed.