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For usual prelude to unusual act
The years are ground upon the usual stone
Of usual experience and fact.
One year cries out, sounding its usual groan
Another laughs, the usual joy expressed,
Their counterpoint attunes the laugh and moan.
By this attunement living is assessed,
And when it lacks discordant voices roar
So that at night we sleep but cannot rest.
Which all are facts, and adding to their store.,
This must, the bounded soul, grow cramped for space
And set a Cerberus outside his door,
Which monster, lodging at this usual place,
Tempts us to drug his tireless throat and eyes
And smuggle in another word or face.
Increased by one, the rest like leaven rise
Till cells equipped for days contain a year
The compact soul now sprawls and reels with size,
Rubbing great day on day until the wear
Dissolves all separation from the deeds
Which seethe in mass, unspecified and bare.
Unusual act where usual prelude leads,
The mind's defection and the legend's life
No other growth from these specific seeds;
Unusual but inevitable knife
Summoned to separate the day from dream
When these are lost in one like Man and Wife,
So strongly mated but to surgeons seem
Reduced by one, and this diminished figure
Requiring the subtraction which a gleam
Of steel propelled by the most careful finger
Feathers across the fever or such love,
Setting in new relief the Integer.
Salvaged by steel these usual souls improve
And prodigally start their store, forgetting
Mental condition hangs upon this move.
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