1918



I

[840] 

     Whether we write or speak or do but look
     We are ever unapparent. What we are
     Cannot be transfused into word or book,
     Our soul from us is infinitely far.
     However much we give our thoughts the will
     To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
     Our hearts are incommunicable still.
     In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
     The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
     By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
     Unto our very selves we are abridged
     When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams. 



II

[841] 

     If that apparentt part of life's delight
     Our tingled flesh-sense circumscribes were seen
     By aught save reflex and co-carnal sight,
     Joy, flesh and life might prove but a gross screen.
     Haply Truth's body is no eyable being,
     Is the choked vision of blindfolded eyes.
     Wherefrom what comes to thought's sense of life? Nought.
     All is either the irrational world we see
     Or some aught-else whose being-unknown doth rot
     Its use for our thought's use. Whence taketh me
A qualm-like ache of life, a body-deep
Soul-hate of what we seek and what we weep. 



VIII

[847] 

     How many masks wear we, 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 conciousness 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.