The sign work of the Orient it runneth up and down; The Talmud stalks from right to left, a rabbi in a gown; The Roman rolls from left to right from Maytime unto May; But the gods shake up their symbols in an absent-minded way. Their language runs to circles like the language of the eyes, Emphasised by strange dilations with little panting sighs.

The world is growing gentle, But few know what she owes To the understanding lily And the judgment of the rose.

The starry brocade of the summer night Is linked to us as part of our estate; And every bee that wings its sidelong flight Assurance of a sweeter, fairer fate.

I linger on the flathouse roof, the moonlight is divine. But my heart is all aflutter like the washing on the line.

When you return, the youngest of the seers, Released from fetters of ancestral pose, There will be beauty waiting down the years Revisions of the ruby and the rose.

Once a pallid Vestal Doubted truth in blue; Listed red in ruin, Harried every hue; Barricaded vision, Garbed herself in sighs; Ridiculed the birthmarks Of the butterflies.

The very serpents bite their tails; the bees forget to sting, For a language so celestial setteth up a wondering. And the touch of absent mindedness is more than any line, Since direction counts for nothing when the gods set up a sign.