For, as we hunt you down, you must escape And we pursue a shadow of our own That can be caught in a magician’s cape But has the flatness of a painted stone.

Never the running stag, the gull at wing, The pure elixir, the American thing.

And yet, at moments when the mind was hot With something fierier than joy or grief, When each known spot was an eternal spot And every leaf was an immortal leaf,

I think that I have seen you, not as one, But clad in diverse semblances and powers, Always the same, as light falls from the sun, And always different, as the differing hours.

Yet, through each altered garment that you wore, The naked body, shaking the heart’s core.