When emotion and the mind Engage in deliberate dialogue, One hundred nightingales And intellectuals find a common ground, And curse the meeting of their slaves! _First Woman_ The mind must only play With polished relics of emotion, And the heart must never lighten Burdens of the mind. _Second Woman_ I desire to be Irrelevant and voluble, Leaving my terse disgust for a moment. I have met an erudite poet With a northern hardness Motionless beneath his youthful robes. He shuns the quivering fluencies Of emotion, and shifts his dominoes Within a room of tortured angles. But away from this creative room He sells himself to the whims Of his wife, a young virago With a calculating nose. Beneath the flagrant pose Of his double life Emotion and the mind Look disconsolately at each other. _First Woman_ Lyrical abandon And mental cautiousness Must not mingle to a magic Glowing, yet deliberate. _Second Woman_ Never spill your wine Upon a page of mathematics. Drink it decently Within the usual tavern. THE SWORD CONVERSES WITH A PHILOSOPHER _Sword_ The Hindoo raises his arms And holds them level with his shoulders Till they become still and permanent, like horizons. But I prefer to stumble Into abrupt harmonies That must ever be flung aside. With one quick slash I cut Lips of death upon an expressionless breast, And a vermilion sincerity Pardons the sophistry of flesh. It is better to make And leave the moments of a poem Than to erect an ingenious pedestal Upon which blindness solemnly squats. _Philosopher_ Men’s tongues are slow, and they have made you To avenge their hidden shame at this. You give startling girdles to virgins, Red beards to thieves, And writhing necklaces to children, Because the tongues of men are slow And revel in your quicker rhythms. An idiot whirls you around his head And persuades himself that he is swift. Imagination drenches his eyes And he spreads himself flat on your blade. _Sword_ All of your words are concentrated Into the glittering censure of my blade! _Philosopher_