35 Sonnets | Page 2

and undermasks,
Upon our countenance
of soul, and when,
If for self-sport the soul itself unmasks,
Knows it
the last mask off and the face plain?
The true mask feels no inside to
the mask
But looks out of the mask by co-masked eyes.
Whatever
consciousness begins the task
The task's accepted use to sleepness
ties.
Like a child frighted by its mirrored faces,
Our souls, that
children are, being thought-losing,
Foist otherness upon their seen
grimaces
And get a whole world on their forgot causing;
And, when
a thought would unmask our soul's masking,
Itself goes not unmasked
to the unmasking.
IX.
Oh to be idle loving idleness!
But I am idle all in hate of me;
Ever
in action's dream, in the false stress
Of purposed action never set to
be.
Like a fierce beast self-penned in a bait-lair,
My will to act
binds with excess my action,
Not-acting coils the thought with raged
despair,
And acting rage doth paint despair distraction.
Like
someone sinking in a treacherous sand,
Each gesture to deliver sinks
the more;
The struggle avails not, and to raise no hand,
Though but
more slowly useless, we've no power.

Hence live I the dead life each
day doth bring,
Repurposed for next day's repurposing.

X.
As to a child, I talked my heart asleep
With empty promise of the
coming day,
And it slept rather for my words made sleep
Than
from a thought of what their sense did say.
For did it care for sense,
would it not wake
And question closer to the morrow's pleasure?

Would it not edge nearer my words, to take
The promise in the
meting of its measure?
So, if it slept, 'twas that it cared but for
The
present sleepy use of promised joy,
Thanking the fruit but for the
forecome flower
Which the less active senses best enjoy.
Thus with
deceit do I detain the heart
Of which deceit's self knows itself a part.
XI.
Like to a ship that storms urge on its course,
By its own trials our
soul is surer made.
The very things that make the voyage worse
Do
make it better; its peril is its aid.
And, as the storm drives from the
storm, our heart
Within the peril disimperilled grows;
A port is near
the more from port we part--
The port whereto our driven direction
goes.
If we reap knowledge to cross-profit, this
From storms we
learn, when the storm's height doth drive--
That the black presence of
its violence is
The pushing promise of near far blue skies.
Learn we
but how to have the pilot-skill,
And the storm's very might shall mate
our will.
XII.
As the lone, frighted user of a night-road
Suddenly turns round,
nothing to detect,
Yet on his fear's sense keepeth still the load
Of
that brink-nothing he doth but suspect;
And the cold terror moves to
him more near
Of something that from nothing casts a spell,
That,
when he moves, to fright more is not there,
And's only visible when
invisible
So I upon the world turn round in thought,
And nothing
viewing do no courage take,
But my more terror, from no seen cause

got,
To that felt corporate emptiness forsake,
And draw my sense of
mystery's horror from
Seeing no mystery's mystery alone.
XIII.
When I should be asleep to mine own voice
In telling thee how much
thy love's my dream,
I find me listening to myself, the noise
Of my
words othered in my hearing them.
Yet wonder not: this is the poet's
soul.
I could not tell thee well of how I love,
Loved I not less by
knowing it, were all
My self my love and no thought love to prove.

What consciousness makes more by consciousness,
It makes less, for
it makes it less itself,
My sense of love could not my love rich-dress

Did it not for it spend love's own love-pelf.
Poet's love's this (as in
these words I prove thee):
I love my love for thee more than I love
thee.
XIV.
We are born at sunset and we die ere morn,
And the whole darkness
of the world we know,
How can we guess its truth, to darkness born,

The obscure consequence of absent glow?
Only the stars do teach
us light. We grasp
Their scattered smallnesses with thoughts that
stray,
And, though their eyes look through night's complete mask,

Yet they speak not the features of the day.
Why should these small
denials of the whole
More than the black whole the pleased eyes
attract?
Why what it calls «worth» does the captive soul
Add to the
small and from the large detract?
So, put of light's love wishing it
night's stretch,
A nightly thought of day we darkly reach.
XV.
Like a bad suitor desperate and trembling
From the mixed sense of
being not loved and loving,
Who with feared longing half would
know, dissembling
With what he'd wish proved what he fears soon
proving,
I look with inner eyes afraid to look,
Yet perplexed into

looking, at the worth
This verse may have and wonder, of my book,

To what thoughts shall't in alien hearts give birth.
But, as he who
doth love, and, loving, hopes,
Yet, hoping, fears, fears to put proof to
proof,
And in his mind for possible proofs gropes,
Delaying the true
proof, lest the real thing scoff,
I