Mardi Gras

VOL. LXII NO. I

APRIL 1943

SPRING RITUAL

MARDI GRAS

For Jack Thompson

A WAKE and go where Christ-the-lily goes

Upon the green pavilions under snow;

Superior as the insect on his hill,

Allow no corpse for obstacle,

But crocus-rude, in errorless array,

Seek some proud alibi for guilt

Whose acrimonious result

Identifies the race and stains its day.

On perfect wheels and punctual with bloom

The leaves and larks of early summer come;

The coltish tree is shivering in its limbs

And, nosing through the lakes and streams,

The plucky trout in his tradition too;

Though all must come to atrophy,

The prodigal success of May

Will sponsor marvels all the summer through.

Weep for the special places of the spring;

They are not yours. But to the press of things,

The cost in bodies of a small mistake,

The necessary lamentation, wake

Upon a plot of earth between bare boards;

Philosophy will draw you down

Who, ravelling in these hazards, drown

Like any parachutist. choked with cords.

If some emblazoned charlatan can lease

With clever charity our helplessness

His time is now; since we, the living sign

Of that commotion holidays define

Must, in this artifice of error, show

Our genius for such misery,

The world is ripe, if only he

Will clamp his irons on this vertigo.

Yet if the records of the crocus hold,

And if in that example we may build

For straight successions of our tenure here;

Humiliated, may we swear

By every staunch commitment in the fields

That summer is a rhythm come

Like sleep upon delirium;

In that high lesson may these fevers yield.

Crossed in the greatest argument of man,

With wicked gifts of steel we are undone

Until, among the relics of defeat,

We find some smoky hero breathing yet,

And tend his wound, and teach him second faith;

The quicker wisdom of the earth

Awaits, in rolling ease, our birth

Who take, once more, our privilege in death.