Magnet (verse)
Hartsock, Ernest
Magnet Through castles of arboreal chrysoprase The mullet goes in glory all his days. No garnet domes in dreamy Xanadu Approach the vaulted capitols of gold Where fish are kings. No galleries hold...
...Drunk with the moon's hot magnet of desire, The sea's Endymion above the flood He flings like fire his brief ecstatic leap, An iridescent arrow from the deep...
...But he is swift and will not be delayed...
...The sea's hypnotic flowers Pluck at his silver spine with arms of jade...
...Up through the balconies of salty towers The mullet climbs...
...Does he behold the air as Promised Land, As moths and men cry starward in the night, Promethean before the unknown light...
...Pricked with electric flavor in his blood He spreads Icarian wings of crystal wire...
...Anemones like mammoth trilliums Winnow the stair of wonder that he comes...
...Why should he leave his sunken Samarkand, For sky's new Nautilus of opal arches...
...No galleries hold Such murals of imaginative blue...
...Ernest Hartsock...
...Can he discern the goal beyond the marches...
Vol. 11 • April 1930 • No. 26
