VI
MAN THE MOTH

Allow the wakeful Spring to die:
None of it's your concern.
Winters tomorrow will still burn
what feelings Summers try.

Yet keep your own wings warm & dry
while Th'World weeps, icebound,
though you're Life's washed-out butterfly
and sink without (a) sound

yet at its lapse Th'Must will be
on wings of the quiet way
taking in all the prophecy
its course drew yesterday ⁹

^{9} Perhaps this poem defends too much the Self against the reality of the world --Why not THIS poem (if only this poem, then?). Discarded version:

Allow the wakeful Spring to die:
None of it's your concern.
Tomorrow's Winter will still burn
where you must fly.

But keep your own wings warm & dry
while Worlds coolly drown.

Today's a Summer butterfly
which sinks without a sound
but O tomorrow Autumn may be
on wings of the quiet way
taking in all insatiety
Soul poured out yesterday.

insatiety: I pronounce it as a four-syllable word with the accent falling only on the second syllable. I do the same thing with the word 'continuity' (and hope this good idiosyncrasy spreads). I mean that life is 'eaten up' with dissatisfactions (usually with things we cannot change). We call it ambition, or the Quest for Perfection, or anything else. "Taking it in" means resignation & defeat. A casual conceit ends the poem, but effectively enough. The moth is the important symbol; the world is the doomed moth.  [...[ to the moth: "You are the world, let the moth (world) die." (See poem CLXXV.)@

INDEX

Poems & Stories Copyright 1996 S. D. Rodrian
626 Lalor Street
Trenton, N.J. 08611
email sdr@sdrodrian.com
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