V.W. (1941)

That woman with her turning gaze
At people in a room—the rays
Showing beyond the masked appearance
Their lives she’d changed into her trance—
Men, women, rocks, moths, leaves,
Golden sea-floor under green waves—

With heavy stones filled her dress
Then lay down in a shallow brook.
I see her there through curving glass,
Broken crystal of her face,
Her mind wave-scattered pages of her book.

AFTER HOELDERLIN

The lines of our lives here are dense and varied
Like wandering paths through forests mountain-boundaried.
But there—they are seen whole and reconciled
—With love, harmonious peace—that here ran wild.

This Issue

April 20, 1967