What is Man?
And, after all,
she said,
what is Man but a butterfly?
A thousand faithless
colours
playing wildly across the landscape?
Without the moondust on
their wings
and their painted eyes,
they are really only
shabby shapes,
crushed by fingers and broken by careless hands.
What careless hands we have!
Always breaking butterflies!
Man,
she said,
is like a tiger.
With heavy soft feet and sharp faces,
devouring the butterflies,
they come.
What is Man but a tiger
feeding on jungles
and bright
colours?
What is Man but a tiger?
Striped and long,
slinking in the bamboo,
sleeping in the leaves?
Was there ever,
she asked,
a green like the leaves we sleep in?
What greens we have!
Always congealing into jewellery!
Man,
she said,
O, there are many thousands
of men,
but they are all the same.
What are they but
goldfish
in a green lily-pond?
Enticed by ugly-coloured flakes of food,
crumbled by the fingers
of a fascinated child,
they swim,
unfurling their tails in the water.
What are men but goldfish?
Coddled and watched
by the wide eyes
of a child whose face is filled with illusions,
they swim,
lazy and slow and easy to look at,
many
colours
that are all orange.
Why do we call goldfish gold?
They are all the same kind of orange!
What poisons we have that are orange!
What tricks our colours play!
Man,
she said,
is nothing but a sparrow.
What a sparrow Man is!
Darting as though
there were something to be in a hurry about!
Life is slow
and
what is Man but a sparrow?
Impatient as the wind,
quick as the wind,
determined as the wind
to go where it must?
O, but Man will never be the
wind!
What is Man but a sparrow?
A brown-coloured
breath of air
dancing in the sky?
Searching for the sun
forever,
that is all.
That is all.
O, there was never room enough in the world
to hold all the things Man
searches for!
The world is too small for my things to be found!
The world is too small for me!
Man,
she cried,
Man is only a lizard!
Not so slithering as a snake,
nor so small as a salamander,
nor so dangerous as a crocodile!
Man has only small feet and insane eyes!
Only
insane eyes and
rough skin.
Hiding in the sand,
he lies,
trying to kiss the shy sun.
Why,
she wept,
what is Man but a little lizard,
dry against my hands?
O, my hands are dry!
O, my eyes are dry!
What is so dry as the sand and the modest sun?
What is as much a lie?
How the white sand tricks us like our colours!
How the white sand holds on to our feet!
Man,
she said,
as she sat beneath a tree,
Man is a hyacinthe,
bundled and fragrant,
bright and beautiful,
quick to burst forth and quick to die.
Man is summer!
Man is snow!
Man is the pale swan flying from the cold
and
the crying, snivelling kitten lying in the gutter!
Man is the toad coming out of the desert floor in the rain
and
the grey-eared donkey who knows his way home!
O,
she said,
as she rested her hand on the trunk of the tree,
what is the sense of it?
Man is everything!
Man is nothing!
Man is the broken-hearted lover left in the rain,
waiting for nothing!
Man is the sound of the piano when it is out of tune!
Man is the kiss of the rain
and
the cracked stone split across the path!
Man is the cold water creeping from the lake
and
the green leaves where the tiger sleeps!
Man is everything!
Man is nothing!
Yet--
As the rain began,
she said,
Man.
Man is a butterfly.
Man is only a butterfly.
What is Man but a butterfly?
What is Man but a butterfly,
sailing away,
slipping away,
vanishing
on a little puff of wind
into the painted sky?
Fin
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