Beyond Reason
-Stanley Kunitz

The blessing in this conscious fruit, the hurt
Which is unanswerable, fill the brow
With early death. O Sion of my heart,
The milk of love were charitable now.

I do not come intent to be your lord,
Nor to contract the empire of your flight,
But as the long eye holds the spinning bird
Enclosed in the circumference of sight

And yet the bird is infinitely free
To dip its beak into the thinnest air,
So do I stand. I am not destiny
To color time or plot a hemisphere.

Creatures that carry in their little blood
Malignant influences moved to keep
Delight from love, the lonely from the proud,
Destroy themselves to live. If in my sleep

The ape, the serpent, and the fox I find
Shut with my soul in fortunes's writhing sack,
I tame them with the sections of my mind
And teach my mind to love its thoughtless crack.