Upon This Rock

(for Helen Phillips)

By pain of stone and wearing down of bronze,

By plaster scrambled with excelsior,

Things come out which were not things before,

And bodies letch with all the grace of swans;

So thus, the strong wings that Leda knew

Holding her steady, while the beak applied its kiss

And she experienced that unsuspected bliss,

Show how they became one symbol, never two;

And the twin-backed beast is common here,

The single symbol seems to search

For another one on which to perch

To make its abundant motives clear:

In excellent amity these forms combine

Whose easy couplings show that sex

Should not be feared, and should not vex

The wife, the harlot or the concubine.

Here Leda and the Centaurs speak

Of love and parentage unknown

To those whose lechery was thrown

At such who did not understand, whose weak

Longing petered out, who lived alone

And did not like it. Teach them, O plaster,

Bronze, that their disaster

Lay in their fear of attitudes of stone.