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 

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