THE LOOM

My brother, the god, and I grow sick

Of heaven's heights.

We plunge to the valley to hear the tick

Of days and nights.

We walk and loiter around the Loom

To see, if we may,

The Hand that smashes the beam in the gloon

To 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 around

You shall but hear

A murmuring life, as it were the sound

Of bees or a sphere.

No Hand is seen, but still you may feel

A pulse in the thread,

And thought in every lever and wheel

Where the shuttle sped,

Dripping the colors, as crushed and urged —

Is it cochineal?—

Shot from the shuttle, woven and merged

A tale to reveal.

Woven and wound in a bolt and dried

As it were a plan.

Closer I looked at the thread and cried

The thread is man!

Then my brother curious, strong and bold,

Tugged hard at the bolt

Of the woven life; for a length unrolled

The cryptic cloth.

He gasped for labor, blind for the moult

Of the up-winged moth.

While I saw a growth and a mad crusade

That the Loom had made;

Land and water and living things,

Till I grew afraid

For mouths and claws and devil wings,

And fangs and stings,

And tiger faces with eyes of hell

In caves and holes.

And eyes in terror and terrible

For awakened souls.

I stood above my brother, the god

Unwinding the roll.

And a tale came forth of the woven slain

Sequent and whole,

Of flint and bronze, trowel and hod,

The wheel and the plane,

The carven stone and the graven clod

Painted and baked.

And cromlechs, proving the human heart

Has always ached;

Till it puffed with blood and gave to art

The dream of the dome;

Till it broke and the blood shot up like fire

In tower and spire.

And here was the Persian, Jew and Goth

In the weave of the cloth;

Greek and Roman, Ghibelline, Guelph,

Angel and elf.

They were dyed in blood, tangled in dreams

Like a comet's streams.

And here were surfaces red and rough

In the finished stuff,

Where the knotted thread was proud and rebelled

As the shuttle proved

The fated warp and woof that held

When the shuttle moved;

And pressed the dye which ran to loss

In a deep maroon

Around an altar, oracle, cross

Or a crescent moon.

Around a face, a thought, a star

In 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 tapestry

Be woven and hushed;

The Loom has a tale, you can see, to tell,

And a tale has told.

I love this Gobelin epical

Of scarlet and gold.

If the heart of a god may look in pride

At the wondrous weave

It is something better to Hands which guide —

I see and believe.