The poem of the mind in the act of finding



What will suffice. It has not always had



To find: the scene was set; it repeated what



Was in the script.



Then the theatre was changed



To something else. Its past was a souvenir.







It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.



It has to face the men of the time and to meet



The women of the time. It has to think about war



And it has to find what will suffice. It has



To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage



And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and



With meditation, speak words that in the ear,



In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,



Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound



Of which, an invisible audience listens,



Not to the play, but to itself, expressed



In an emotion as of two people, as of two



Emotions becoming one. The actor is



A metaphysician in the dark, twanging



An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives



Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly



Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,



Beyond which it has no will to rise.



It must



Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may



Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman



Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.





