115

Rather Than Scientific Laws and Permanent Gods

Come, let us pretend we are only toys

played with by the future children of the race;

wear faces of quickilver change

trying out our range of shift,

our implacable strange yearning to be more than we are.

Let us be tossed from image into image,

wear buskins and call ourselves a stage,

and play our drama to no eyes but theirs.

And let them smile at the tragic mask we don betimes

or laugh the comic into principle.

Across the footlights I see

only their eyes, reflecting

little worlds I juggle to paralax and loss,

hear their whispered promptings of my cue,

whirl another sun to empty myth, and draw

out of my tinsel wizard’s hat a new star,

silver for distant seeing.

And in their sudden momentary silence

I know my grandeur

and my nothingness.