The Mind is a wonderful Thing

is an enchanted thing like the glaze on a katydid-wing subdivided by sun till the nettings are legion. Like Giesking playing Scarltti; like the apteryx-awl as a beak, or the kiwi's rain-shawl of haired feathers, the mind feeling its way as though blind, walks along with its eyes on the ground. It has memory's ear that can hear without having to hear. Like the gyroscope's fall, truly equivocal because trued by regnant certainty, it is a power of strong enchantment. It is like the dove- neck animated by sun; it is memory's eye; it's conscientious inconsistency. It tears off the veil; tears the temptation, the mist the heart wears, from its eyes - if the heart has a face; it takes apart dejection. It's fire in the dove-neck's iridescence; in the inconsistencies of Scarlatti. Unconfusion submits its confusion to proof; it's not a Herod's oath that cannot change.