THE SPIRIT ARIEL

(After reading Shakespeare’s Tempest)

Once long ago somewhere you freed him

with that same jolt with which as a young man

you tore yourself toward greatness, away from all regard.

He became willing, and ever since he serves,

poised for freedom after every deed.

And half imperiously, half almost ashamed,

you inform him that for this and that

you still require him, and, ah, must tell again

that story of how you helped him. And yet you feel, yourself,

how everything that you keep back through him

is missing from the air. How sweet and almost tempting:

to let him go—, and then, no longer conjuring,

enrolled in fate like all the others,

to know that his light friendship now,

without any strain, nowhere any obligation,

an adjunct to this breathing’s space,

is at work in the element, unthinkingly.

Henceforth dependent, no longer with that gift

to shape the dull mouth into the call

at which he came. Powerless, aging, poor,

yet breathing him like incomprehensibly far-flung

scattered fragrance by which alone the invisible

is made complete. Smiling, that you could

summon him this way, in such great dealings

so easily at home. Perhaps weeping too,

when you remember how it loved and longed

to leave you, both, always the same desire.

(Have I let it go? Now this man frightens me,

who’s becoming Duke again. How gently

he draws the cord through his head and hangs

himself up with the other figures and begs

henceforth the play’s indulgence … What an epilogue

to mastery achieved. Mere naked standing-there

with nothing but his strength: “which is most faint.”)

Ronda, January–February 1913