The Cleft In The Wall

They pass through my brain and leave not a mark: cities and women and autumnal skies. I am related to nothing in the phenomenal flux, The world-days are vain shapes of desire, a mist on my mirror, my mind-- My mind that reflects cities and women and autumnal skies, Wrack of old Chaos, wrack of old Time. My soul is a fountain that balances the ball of the visible cosmos; I toss high, I toss hither and thither the whole universe, the hollow ball of desire-- It is nothing to me, a sport, a day-dream, as meaningless as old death and old birth, Or cities and women and autumnal skies.

I travelled far with my pickaxe and spade and spied by chance a tiny cleft in Time’s granite wall-- I called it the NOW; And through it I peeped like a boy through a knot-hole, Peeped into the Infinite, a sea no bigger than a dewdrop, placid and waveless and spaceless. (What Giant Shape lay therein, the opening and shutting of whose eyes gendered immeasureable cycles?) I passed through the cleft of the NOW with infinite labor, and dispersed body and soul, And cities and women and autumnal skies drift past my sight and leave me untouched.