THE LOOM
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y brother, the god, and I grow sickOf heaven's heights.We plunge to the valley to hear the tickOf days and nights.We walk and loiter around the LoomTo see, if we may,The Hand that smashes the beam in the gloonTo the shuttle's play;Who grows the wool, who cards and spins,Who clips and ties;For the storied weave of the Gobelins,Who draughts and dyes. But whether you stand or walk aroundYou shall but hearA murmuring life, as it were the soundOf bees or a sphere.No Hand is seen, but still you may feelA pulse in the thread,And thought in every lever and wheelWhere the shuttle sped,Dripping the colors, as crushed and urged--Is it cochineal?--Shot from the shuttle, woven and mergedA tale to reveal.Woven and wound in a bolt and driedAs it were a plan.Closer I looked at the thread and criedThe thread is man! Then my brother curious, strong and bold,Tugged hard at the boltOf the woven life; for a length unrolledThe cryptic cloth.He gasped for labor, blind for the moultOf the up-winged moth.While I saw a growth and a mad crusadeThat the Loom had made;Land and water and living things,Till I grew afraidFor mouths and claws and devil wings,And fangs and stings,And tiger faces with eyes of hellIn caves and holes.And eyes in terror and terribleFor awakened souls. I stood above my brother, the godUnwinding the roll.And a tale came forth of the woven slainSequent and whole,Of flint and bronze, trowel and hod,The wheel and the plane,The carven stone and the graven clodPainted and baked.And cromlechs, proving the human heartHas always ached;Till it puffed with blood and gave to artThe dream of the dome;Till it broke and the blood shot up like fireIn tower and spire. And here was the Persian, Jew and GothIn the weave of the cloth;Greek and Roman, Ghibelline, Guelph,Angel and elf.They were dyed in blood, tangled in dreamsLike a comet's streams.And here were surfaces red and roughIn the finished stuff,Where the knotted thread was proud and rebelledAs the shuttle provedThe fated warp and woof that heldWhen the shuttle moved;And pressed the dye which ran to lossIn a deep maroonAround an altar, oracle, crossOr a crescent moon.Around a face, a thought, a starIn a riot of war! Then I said to my brother, the god, let be,Though the thread be crushed,And the living things in the tapestryBe woven and hushed;The Loom has a tale, you can see, to tell,And a tale has told.I love this Gobelin epicalOf scarlet and gold.If the heart of a god may look in prideAt the wondrous weaveIt is something better to Hands which guide--I see and believe.
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