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Songs for Solstice


ISSUE:  Winter 1937

Songs for solstice
My days and midnights now are grown Equal with their equality;
My solar noondays wane;
My darks, tomorrow night, shall be Of taller shadow than my light May own. Brief storm of love, unloose Your final rain upon my sight;
Tangle the earth about my eyes.
Now must my summer sun traverse Libra and Sagittarius To mansion in the winter house.
Sweet storm of love, unloose All heaven’s bottles now in one To blot away my marching sun.
LAST LOVE
AS MIRROR catches on its bright Recumbent disk the morning sun,
All early suns, all previous light,
In your conclusive disk are one.
Not with a luminance unique You dazzle my diminished eyes;
Feeding your personal solar peak,
All early daysprings re-arise.

You are the moon whose mountainy waste
Harbors reflection not her own:
On your dark course the heavens trace
Diurnal light of double mien,
Convening in a lunar one
The rising and the setting sun.
SIGN OF CAPRICORNUS
EQUATOR now diminishes upon My backward sight; my northward motion Carries my frightened and reluctant sun To solstice; and my every ocean Stands still one moment in wide space.
Now have I reached my Capricorn.
Though sun turns southwardly her face My solar heart may not return.
Here in the universe I pause,
Struck still, the only star
Which cannot now retrace her course
In graceful and recurrent arc.
For me solstitium is unique:
Bringing one vernal and one brumal peak.
DIMENSIONAL
HOW mediaeval seems my love To her who watches with the print Of that first lover’s kiss to prove Spring has no rival in mid-winter.
Yet none may gauge with justest rod How tall, how wide, how deep is all Grave love, who must compute the yardage By measure of a primal rule.

Against my rod’s conclusive reach Now, mark by mark,
I straitly measure The day’s dimensional; and search If now be midmost or be less Than half, or if I measure staunch Upon the heart love’s terminal inch.
INTRINSIC COIN
UPON my metal’s passive flan The last die printed shall erase Al1 other lettered legends and All other images beneath one face,
Now, cut and shaped, the final block Glitters in air; one moment now,
And on my silver’s waiting lack Shall swift descend the forging blow.
Falls through the winter sun the die! Imprinted now is last device.
Forevermore whoever must My coin examine, thereon shall see Over the metal’s bright obverse Your head in endless monarchy.

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