Grim, gruesome gallantry, to which he is doomed. Dragged out of an eternity of silent isolation And doomed to partiality, partial being, Ache, and want of being, Want, Self-exposure, hard humiliation, need to add himself on to her. Born to walk alone, Forerunner, Now suddenly distracted into this mazy sidetrack, This awkward, harrowing pursuit, This grim necessity from within. Does she know As she moves eternally slowly away? Or is he driven against her with a bang, like a bird flying in the dark against a window, All knowledgeless? The awful concussion, And the still more awful need to persist, to follow, follow, continue, Driven, after aeons of pristine, fore-god-like singleness and oneness, At the end of some mysterious, red-hot iron, Driven away from himself into her tracks, Forced to crash against her. Stiff, gallant, irascible, crook-legged reptile, Little gentleman, Sorry plight, We ought to look the other way. Save that, having come with you so far, We will go on to the end. J TORTOISE SHOUT I thought he was dumb, I said he was dumb, Yet I've heard him cry. First faint scream, Out of life's unfathomable dawn, Far off, so far, like a madness, under the horizon's dawning rim, Far, far off, far scream. Tortoise _in extremis_. Why were we crucified into sex? Why were we not left rounded off, and finished in ourselves, As we began, As he certainly began, so perfectly alone? A far, was-it-audible scream, Or did it sound on the plasm direct? Worse than the cry of the new-born, A scream, A yell, A shout, A paean, A death-agony, A birth-cry, A submission, All tiny, tiny, far away, reptile under the first dawn. War-cry, triumph, acute-delight, death-scream reptilian, Why was the veil torn? The silken shriek of the soul's torn membrane? The male soul's membrane Torn with a shriek half music, half horror. Crucifixion.