Perseus

Borrowed wings on his ankles
Carrying a stone death
The hero entered the hall,
All the hall looked up
Their breath frozen on them
And there was no more shuffle or clater in the hall at all

So a friend of a man comes in
And leaves a book he is lending or flowers
And goes again, alive, but as good as dead,
And you are left alive, no better than dead,
And you dare not turn the leaden pages of the book or
    touch the flowers, the hooded and arrested hours.

Close your eyes,
There are suns beneath your lids
Or look in the looking-glass in the end room
You will find it full of eyes
And ancient smiles of men cut out with scissors and kept
    in mirrors.

Ever to meet me comes, in sun or dull,
The gay hero swinging the Gorgon's head
And I am left, with the dull drumming of the sun sus-
    pended and dead
Or the dumb grey-brown of the day is a leper's cloth
And one feels the earth going round and round the globe
    of the blackening mantle, a mad moth.