A leafs otherness,
The whaled monstered sea-bottom, eagled peaks
And stars that hang over hurtling endlessness,
With manslaughtering shocks

Are let in on his sense:
So many a one has dared to be struck dead
Peeping through his fingers at the world's ends,
Or at an ant's head.

But better defence
Than any militant pride are the freebooting crass
Veterans of survival and those champions
Forgetfulness, madness.

Brain in deft opacities,
Walled in translucencies, shuts out the world's knocking
With a welcome, and to wide-eyed deafnesses
Of prudence lets it speak.

Long the eggshell head's
Fragility rounds and resists receiving the flash
Of the sun, the bolt of the earth: and feeds
On the yolk's dark and hush

Of a helplessness coming
By feats of torpor, by circumventing sleights
Of stupefaction, juggleries of benumbing,
By lucid sophistries of sight
To a staturing 'I am',
To the upthrust affirmative head of a man.
Braggart-browed complacency in most calm
Collusion with his own

Dewdrop frailty
Must stop the looming mouth of the earth with a pin-
Point cipher, with a blank-stare courtesy
Confront it and preen,

Spurn it muck under
His foot-clutch, and opposing his eye's flea-red
Fly-catching fervency to the whelm of the sun,
Trumpet his own ear dead.