Progress leaps, amid lulls, for three wed muses:
Innovation, imitation, contest

Imagine, visitor, a vast room full of bits of straight string—
People stand all around, some scratch their heads, none moves,
Until our brave hero approaches slowly one little length,
Gives her a twist, and voila!
A circle.
A room full of straight strings, and one circle.

Seeing, some other soul thinks, aye! Crass,
Wrong, how unperfect!
Makes a circle too, from another pair of ends—
Look, look! He cries, much better!

On and on likewise, go men and strings,
Til not a single straight string remains,
Only circles, and men
Scratching heads, in none the foggiest idea
What’s to be done with a room full of circles.

If ever you cannot believe that things
On the whole are much different than what you feel—
Scout the horizon—
Does the earth —look— round?

the sage who finds his buddha
in a bowl of hot noodle soup

There lives in man a fire which lies,
Behind our eyes and in our skin;
Upon our tongue the birdie sings
To shake the world
To move all things
To light the coal-cold night
With purple flame,
With leaping golden flame;

It touches on another’s breast
Who smiles at you,
Who calls your name;

Farce is life for man so dark,
So unconvinced, so full with doubt as he
Amidst the hours, months and years
When all the fire’s
Gone out.