Tenacity of landscape i

Eucalyptus farewell

In youth there are such frames for solitude that their true subject is how necessary, solitude is, and how defining they are. Timely, natural courtesies extend invigorating em-braces, without mediation of other faculties or, sometimes worse, of higher learning. In time, where leniency's unlimited, or learning can be worn as lightly as one likes - the prolongation of infancy - a perfectly spiffy sentimental imitation can be improvised. But with his tree a boy has a structur-ing domicile, more than a refuge, where nothing intercedes, where texture, scent, warmth, strength, and shade - generous, you say? - bestow his sense of the immaculate.
And of the authentic.

1st Bacchante:


Night - will it ever come
When what we know is done?
I seek release to a calm
Of green hills, white thighs
Flashing in the grass
The dew-soaked air kissing my throat ..

2nd Bacchante: 


But gently, as the dance of the young deer, swathed
In emerald meadow, when the terror of the hunt is past
The leap over knotted nets, the hunter's shrieks
Forgotten. Let the new order bring peace ..






Wole Soyinka
The Bacchae of Euripides
  A Communion Rite
Norton, 1974©


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