(After a short silence the Narcissus Peddler and the Slender Nun, hand in hand, leap through the window-corner and vanish. The Wine Jar Maiden leaps after them, a moment later, and also disappears. The Mad Shepherd sits down and blows little fragments of piping into his reed, long pauses separating them. As he does this, he looks up at the window, his head motionless. The Narcissus Peddler, the Slender Nun and the Wine Jar Maiden appear from the left walking slowly, in single file, as though in a trance. The Narcissus Peddler stands beside his basket, which he left behind him; the Wine Jar Maiden beside her jar, and the Slender Nun between them) The Mad Shepherd (looking up, astonished): You return, like sleep-drooping poplar trees that have been given wings and after long journeyings fly back to their little blue-green hills. The Narcissus Peddler: After we sprang we found ourselves in a high corridor, whose air was like the breath of a dying maiden—the corridor we first walked down, before we came to this palest purple window. The Mad Shepherd (wonderingly): A dream with a strange, buried, quivering palace whose doors are closed. (The poet quietly appears from the right. He is dressed in a deep crimson robe, pale brown turban and black sandals; his head is bare. He surveys the others a moment, then touches the shoulder of the Wine Jar Maiden. She turns and stares at him. The others turn also) The Poet: You are all in my heart—a wide space with many buried, black palaces, huge pale-purple windows; hills with rocks for mad shepherds, strolling flower venders, wine jar maidens dancing in high courtyards hushed with quilted star-light and sometimes a slender nun walking alone through the aisles of old reveries. I have woven you into a poem, and you were drawn on by me. But when my poems are made I take my people to a far-off garden in my heart. There we sit beneath one of the shining trees and talk. There I shall give you your soul, your heart, your song—and your huge narcissus flower. And out of them make other poems, perhaps? Come. (He leads them away) Spectrum Emanuel Morgan Opus 96 You are the Japan Where cherries always blossom. With you there is no meantime. Your are the nightingale’s twenty-four hours of song, The unbroken Parthenon, The everlasting purring of the sphynx. At the first footfall of an uncouth season, You migrate with one wing-sweep To beauty. The Reader Critic Indiscriminate Illusions E. L. R., Bear Creek, Pa.: After reading your article “Push Face” in your June number I have torn the magazine to pieces and burned it in the fire. You may discontinue my subscription.