Muriel Rukeyser




Song, the Brain-Coral

Lie still, be still, love, be thou not shaken,
it is for me to be shaken,
to bring tokens.

Among the yellow light in the hot gardens,
the thinned green light in the evening gardens,
I speak of gladness.

Let the great night, wearing its moods and shadows,
find us so, stilled within its varied shadows
falling like feathers.

We change in images, color, visions, and change;
I bring you, speak you now a changeless stone,
the strange brain-coral,

thrown white on beaches beside the peacock Stream.
Lie still, love, while the many physical worlds stream
passionate by,

in dreams of the exterior intricate rainbow world,
dreaming the still white intricate stone of the world,
—bring you brain-coral,
a world’s white seeming.