The imagination that we spurned and crave:
Unreal! Give back to us what once we gave….
A band entwining, set with fatal stones,
Bear other perfumes on your pale head wear.
For this, musician, in your girdle fixed,
The difference that heavenly pity brings,
Our feigning with the strange, unlike, whence springs
Too near, too clear, saving a little to endow,
Yet not too like, yet not so like to be….
We give ourselves your latest issuance,
O bough and bush and scented vine, in whom
Among the arrant spices of the sun,
As in your name, an image that is sure,
That apprehends the most which sees and names,
And of all vigils musing the obscure,
The near, the clear, and flaunts the dearest bloom,
That music is intensest which proclaims
That retentive of themselves are men.
In the laborious weaving that you wear
Most rare, or ever of more kindred air
Than yours, out of our imperfections wrought,
Gives motion to perfection more serene,
Gross effigy and simulacrum, none
By being so much of the things we are,
Yet leaves us in them, until earth becomes,
That separates us from the wind and sea,
Now of the music summoned by the birth.
No crown is simpler than the simple hair:
Its venom of renown, and on your head,
Of cloudy silver sprinkles in your gown
And flame and summer and sweet fire — no thread.
And queen, and of deducted love the day
And of the fragrant mothers the most dear
Most near, most clear, and of the clearest bloom,
And of the sisterhood of the living dead
Sister and mother and inducive lore.
— Steven S. Wallace
(– zumwalt’s only known purely “contextual poem”)
