← The anthology

Irving Layton(b. 1912)

The Birth of Tragedy

And me happiest when I compose poems.

Love, power, the huzza of battle

are something, are much;

yet a poem includes them like a pool

water and reflection.

In me, nature's divided things—

tree, mold on tree—

have their fruition;

I am their core. Let them swap,

bandy, like a flame swerve

I am their mouth; as a m o u t h I serve.

And I observe how the sensual moths

big with odor and sunshine

dart into the perilous shrubbery;

or drop their visiting shadows

upon the garden I one year made

of flowering stone to be a footstool

for the perfect gods:

who, friends to the ascending orders,

sustain all passionate meditations

and call down pardons

for the insurgent blood.

A quiet m a d m a n , never far from tears,

I lie like a slain thing

under the green air the trees

inhabit, or rest upon a chair

towards which the inflammable air

tumbles on many robins' wings;

noting how seasonably

leaf and blossom uncurl

and living things arrange their death,

while someone from afar off

blows birthday candles for the world.