Julia Cooley

(Chicago Art Institute)

THEY crowd about me, close and white and still—

These statutes. On their lips is vocal silence.

They frighten me with the depth of their unspoken wisdom,

And the vast presences of spectral thoughts floating

In the white, un-pupiled spaces of their eyes.

They look down upon me with the penetration of Sphinxes.

In the deep, unsentient regions of their soulless clay

They hold all the secrets which my living soul knows not.

Yet for a moment, a sunlit while, I rise

Above their white everlastingness!

I am rosy with life, dancing in the current of motion.

Their stillness intensifies my strength, my power!

For a little the great world is mine completely!

The Faun, chained whitely in his marble statue,

Yearns to leap out into the world with me.

He would rush, singing for joy, with me down the street.

King Arthur strains to march out into the city

With his sword and his buckler, and his eyes filled with the Grail.

But they are fast in their cases of clay, and I am free!

I will walk forth with the borrowed strength of their mastery.

I will walk on and on, until my gladness, my motion, my life

Are sealed like theirs in the silent wisdom of clay.

I will walk forth with the life-giving power of their beauty.