Other Self
My inmost creature, Caliban perhaps, Perhaps St. Francis (at least a sort of dunce) Sits, like a Chinese sage listening to A colloquy of summer afternoons, Inscrutable understanding on his brow.
The panegyric that his silence is Comes clear to me (that other sort of dunce), Written with smallest wrinkles, the stillness of A sleeve, the half-beginnings of a glance, An air of sensuous contemplative.
What pool rocks what white petal in his gaze? What fluffed out bird is blobbed upon its bough?
I can see mountains, but they are not his Tressed with cascades and single in the sky.
Removed by poems from glittering paddy fields.
II I could make the epigram he is, The seventeen syllables saying exactly, what They exactly do not say, this outer man Would see such blossoms frosting with their light The barbarous province he is banished in.
NORMAN MACCAIG
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