The Casket of Pandora

WHEN for a long time I contemplate this box,
Carved so cunningly by the hand of a God,
Glittering with withheld treasure,

I take no delight in my eye’s light, the body’s pleasure.

How many times awake, or in sleep, a voice
Through the open window, from the earth or the shore,
Says ‘This thing, this thing, you must not explore.’

The shade of evil falls on the pure grass;
It shoots up from my life’s root, its face
Troubling the emptiness of clear water.

And somewhere in my dream, the sound of pain and slaughter.

Then, waking in my room, the casket gleams;
The maiden pallor of the morning light
Pierces my heart with an unnatural night.

For in my world it is always morning,
The dew refreshes the mind, the early flowers
Hint of a delicate spring, foretell a green summer.

Now always at my door, the step of a newcomer

Whose face I never see though I open the door,
Though I look through sun-struck windows,
Though I peer through the enchanted lawn.

Then I touch the casket’s lid, pearl-clear as dew on the lawn,

Locked, locked as a scent in a closed flower’s heart;
O to open the glittering box, to shut my ears
To the small voice that seems to sound from a tree.

Through my window the tree takes shape, has a face I cannot see,

O marvelous tree! half-sun, half wine-dark.
I feel the murmur run through your sap like blood
Eager for the deed to be done, wild to be understood!