Twilight is spacious, near things in it seem far, And distant things seem near. Now in the green west hangs a yellow star. And now across old waters you may hear The profound gloom of bells among still trees, Like a rolling of huge boulders beneath seas. Silent as thought in evening contemplation Weaves the bat under the gathering stars. Silent as dew, we seek new incarnation, Meditate new avatars. In a clear dusk like this Mary climbed up the hill to seek her son, To lower him down from the cross, and kiss The mauve wounds, every one. Men with wings In the dusk walked softly after her. She did not see them, but may have felt The winnowed air around her stir; She did not see them, but may have known Why her son’s body was light as a little stone. She may have guessed that other hands were there Moving the watchful air. Now, unless persuaded by searching music Which suddenly opens the portals of the mind, We guess no angels, And are contented to be blind. Let us blow silver horns in the twilight, And lift our hearts to the yellow star in the green, To find perhaps, if, while the dew is rising, Clear things may not be seen. MORNING SONG FROM “SENLIN” It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning When the light drips through the shutters like the dew, I arise, I face the sunrise, And do the things my fathers learned to do. Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die, And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet Stand before a glass and tie my tie. Vine-leaves tap my window, Dew-drops sing to the garden stones, The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree Repeating three clear tones. It is morning. I stand by the mirror And tie my tie once more. While waves far off in a pale rose twilight Crash on a white sand shore. I stand by a mirror and comb my hair: How small and white my face!— The green earth tilts through a sphere of air And bathes in a flame of space. There are houses hanging above the stars And stars hung under a sea ... And a sun far off in a shell of silence Dapples my walls for me....