Helios: Parhelion

Take your hands from the face:

She will never know

Why you graze the florid lips;

She will not understand.

After so many slipshod spasms

She is tricked to an end

By arrogant matchless flight

Of this screaming bird

As he swings in the spokes of the sun,

This fiery wheel,

The gilded disk turning the air

To light and tawny sky.

She watches the gull come down

To the sloping sand ; she knows

The long course through the tidal bay

From ocean inland;

Now she will put aside

The indices of hate.

She will see the arc of the wind

In bellowing trees

And the great sun, and stand

With the gold on her face,

The streaming yellow light,

She will trace the curvet of light

While the slow birds drift at the edge

Of the tides, she will turn

(She will never be still)

To the sullied pines and the landed dead,

To a mock sun of blood

And a clutter of dials in the smoke.

She will reckon her time

With a broken stone and parhelion -

Take your hands from the face:

She will not understand -

Loose your pack over Europe!

The sundogs howl! She will reckon

Her time with a glass

Till a bullet scatters the sand -

She will not understand.