Alphabets

I now think nature's way of bringing love
To humans is as strange as any myth
Of us or of our origins. The snail,
Still selfish in its house, has such an ease
As had contented Adam's innocence
Before the Lord divided him in two
And even a pair of legs seen at a distance
Would be enough to bring him, all year long,
The poignant hope, that new wish for a difference
Pygmalion made a copy of in clay
Responsive to his breath. I thought of you
As that first alphabet, bird shape and beast shape,
Which opens to desire the rule beginning
And ending with the 3, the two of us
And love, that spells the two as one; but Proteus
Is truer to himself than we can be
For long to our first word. Bewildering changes!
Water and sunlight! cockroach, parrot, shark
And what is not the same enough to nam,
The newborn nous itself a mystery
Tormented in some pool beside the Nile,
Now lonelier than Adam or the snail.