When Spirits Speak Of Life

Three spirits sit upon a low stone wall placed on the top of a hill. Their figures are gray, with human outlines, and their faces are those of a boy, a woman, and an old man. Light is greeting intimations of evening. The wall, the hill, and the figures exist only to the spirits who have created them. FIRST SPIRIT We have made a wall And take it gravely. SECOND SPIRIT The pensive vagary That let us to return to earth Welcomes these pretty illusions. Stone wall, hill, and evening Become the touch of spice Precious to our weariness. THIRD SPIRIT The animated brevity Of this world is captivating! We have journeyed inward To the ever-distant center of life, Where language is a universe Seething with variations, And form becomes the changing warmth Of wrestling influences; Where motion is the plunging light of thoughts Dying upon each other. FIRST SPIRIT We find an incredulous pleasure In changing from violent influences To breath that is mutilated with outlines. With a subtle suspicion, we great The tiny fables of our hands and feet. We take the little blindness of eyes To reassure ourselves That the fables will not vanish. Humorously we trade Languages, like one who gives a plateau For a drop of old liquor! SECOND SPIRIT Once we were germs of thought Squirming under elastic disguises- The bank-clerk inscribing tombstones; The poet playing surgeon to his heart; The cardinal starving his flesh. Our bodies were images made by thought And symbolizing the pain of its birth. Murder, love, and theft Were only struggling experiments made by germs of thought emerging to form. THIRD SPIRIT What men call mysticism Is the lull in which their germ Of thought compensates itself By dreaming of a future form. But when the struggle is resumed, It often derides its inactivity, Scorning the brilliant trace of its exhaustion! FIRST SPIRIT And now, three tired spirits, Seeking a weird trinket of the past, Have slipped into a replica of birth. SECOND SPIRIT Because the gliding search of our life Is lacking in one quality, amusement, We shall often return To evenings, men, and walls of stone.