Volume II Archive

Andy Stallings

On the Future Course of Western Thought

after W.B. Yeats

Above the girl, that glory stilled, and stood
As stone, that always had been stone. Zeus dead,
With the words that stirred when he stirred. What god head
Outlives language? What tongue is understood

When, like a fountain’s spurt, the apex gained,
It drops, restrained by neither time nor space,
And all propulsion lost, disintegrates?
So Zeus’ hour came. So Leda, stained

By the maxims language lent to Man and God—
Peak above plain, the sun-mastered sky,
The right to rape a girl—perhaps was calmed

To know Man’s fall the rise of words; to know the taut
Line dividing sense and thought would dissolve
To water everywhere—not wet, not dry.