A Letter To Yvor Winters

Again tonight I read "Before Disaster,"
The tense memento of a will
That's striven thirty years to master
One chaos with one spirit's skill.
As usual, disaster has returned.
Its public and its private round
Are narrow enough-we will have learned
Them quite by heart before we're underground.
Tonight Orion walks above my head
While I pace out my human mile;
At noon the same immeasurable tread
Will move toward Atlas from the Nile.
He too returns upon his ordered path,
While change seeps through his interstellar veins-
The Bull before him in immobile wrath,
The sword and cloud of light against his reins.
These thin imagos that abide decay,
The minds of Winters, Rexroth, and their like,
To fight these senile beasts what else have they
Than "clouds of unknowing,"
Swords that shall not strike?