The quicksand builders built
against the Folly of All.
They built from ancient custom.

  “Who’s there?”
  “Manto, sir.”
  “Manto?”
  “Yes, sir. your youngest son.”

   Until we part, my reader, put
What is called reality aside.
   Instead,

          I am known
          by my heart’s green core
          as emerald.

    Now hear this:
While they fought around the ship firom Thessaly, 
    Patroclus came crying to the Greek.

I who was born to believe in the power of law
                                 was maquis at heart.
I who wrote that a tapestry stretched to the moon

     The slippery piglet, clear across the way,
has had my tree cut down.
He rang a man who rang a man who knew

When I was green,
Green as the light beneath these leaves,
I used to say:

1.

In retrospect I'd been waiting
For years, never speaking.
Never needing to learn. I listened

The newborn bear has no shape.
The mule rarely gives birth,
The viper only once.