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And imagined him, there, Come, judged, before his small captors, Doing all his lean tricks to amaze themThe back somersault, the kip-upAnd at last, the stand on his hands, Perfect, with his feet together, His head down, evenly breathing, As the sun poured up from the sea And the headsman broke down In a blaze oftears, in that light Ofthe thin, long human frame Upside down in its own strange joy, And, ifsome other one had not told him, Would have cut offthe feet Instead ofthe head, And ifArmstrong had not presently risen In kingly, round-shouldered attendance, And then knelt down in himself Beside his hacked, glittering grave, having done All things in this life that he could. The wedding During that long time, in those places, Courage did no hard thing That could not be easily lived-with. There, as I watched them have it, One ofthem leaned Low in the bell-tent, Sewing a tiger's gold head To the scarred leather breast ofhis jacket. Another pounded softly, with a hammer, A Dutch coin, making a ring for his wife. In the late afternoon, they placed The mallet by the pole Ofthe slack tent, And put on the tiger's head, blazing The Wedding / 59 Over the heart. Among them I moved, Doing the same, feeling the heavenly beast, Without a body, attempt in pure terror to move His legs, as ifto spring from us, His lips, as if To speak for us, As we rode to the black-painted aircraft, And climbed inside and took off. Many are dead, who fell battling The gold, helpless beast that lay Bodiless, on their breaths Like an angel In the air, Who wore their silver rings upon Their gloved, sprung little fingers, So precious had they become, So full ofthe thought oftheir wives That the scratched, tired, beaten-out shining Was more Humanly constant Than they. Years later, I go feeling All ofthem turn into heroes, As in the closed palm ofmy hand, And am strangely delighted to find That they are, to history also, Heroes as well, Though nameless, As the tiger dies, folded over itselfin the attic, As the moon-glowing, center-bored rings We made good before the dark missions, Softly pounding our handful ofmoney, Have been given safely to children, Or nothing, Or to the sea, The human silver, essential to hope in the islands, Now never worn by woman in its life. Into the Stone / 60 ...

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