The Winged Beetle

THE GARDEN OF JANUS 39 But in the end we lift the plumèd casque Of the dead warrior ; Find no chaste corpse therein, but a soft-smiling whore. XIV Then I returned into myself, and took All in my arms, God’s universe : Crushed its black juice out, while His anger shook His dumbness pregnant with a curse. I made me ink, and in a little book I wrote one word That God himself, the adder of Thought, had never heard. XV It detonated. Nature, God, mankind Like sulphur, nitre, charcoal, once Blended, in one annihilation blind Were rent into a myriad of suns. Yea ! all the mighty fabric of a Mind Stood in the abyss, Belching a Law for That more awful than for This. XVI Vain was the toil. So then I left the wood And came unto the still black sea, That oily monster of beatitude ! (Hath Thee for Me, and Me for Thee !) There as I stood, a mask of solitude Hiding a face Wried as a satyr’s, rolled that ocean into space.