ANOMALY

Men who are fain to change, look wizenedly

Into the flowing mirror of your thought

And see on what strange reefs your joys are caught

And contemplate your vexed variety:

Grief that was hooded for eternity

Casting the stole for spangled domino,

Awe on its pinnacle jigging heel and toe.

Love laughing into hate and mockery.

What shoots the warp to patterns that reblend

And spread and fade,— and working out what end?

In time of pain why be as voluble

As one who tells an endless useless sum,

Yet simple clay, pallid and deaf and dumb

Through the one moment forging Heaven or Hell?