The Totems

NOW we must choose our totems, our sacred animals,
we are in the jungle and warring among wild beasts,
led by the witch-doctors,
bound by the tribal spells,
we have been driven to kinship with the animals,
worshipping our totems until
by the mystical initiations we have performed,
each in himself,
we have become the totems.

But not many can learn the longer rites
nor comprehend the ultimate magic:
not many achieve their aim
and gain the wished-for incarnation.

Few are the generous warm-blooded mammals,
lean fine horses, and bulls like urgently moving mountains:
few the maned terrible lion, and fewer still
the strange rare solitary unicorn.

Seldom the eagle and the brilliant song-birds,
the contemplative sea-beasts
lonely in limitless waters
or the vivid restless lizards
sunning on lichened flagstones.

But for the rest—
for us the innumerable swarms and the dead dry rustle of insects—
and even here is little choice:
the grasshoppers have gone
and the winter of war has numbed the singing cicadas.

We are the tenants of the terrible hive
our honey is bitter wormwood
made in the intricate inescapable cells of death
and our sting is annihilation.

We have gone down into the pit,
into the ant-hill and the termite's labyrinth,
where if we evade the devouring crook-horned Minotaur
still we seek Ariadne.

Now we are below the roots of time
and it is very dark.

Searching here I have found my totem-insect,
found and made myself
one with the caddis-worm
in the stagnant pool, in the mud and the dim brown rottenness,
building with vigilant care its armour of chosen fragments
to shield itself intact from the terrors
moving in giant blurred shadows around it.

So I have sought for straws, for the broken sticks and the sand grains,
snatching here from memory, there from experience,
the painter's glimpses of eternity,
the sudden true visions of poets,
the celestial mathematics of music,
the clear crystal of the intellect,
and always love, and the steadfast strength between lovers;
building a stronghold for my soul,
making a refuge,
sheltering and waiting,
waiting.

For to the caddis-worm comes ultimate triumph,
recompense for the hardly preserved integrity
in rebirth and ascent,
up from the turbulent darkness, the doubtful time of endurance,
out to the sun, the shining air, and the freedom of flight
to time's reluctant fruition
and the straight path out of the maze
in final escape.

30 January 1944