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Now and Then
They dance in rings, dancing, a ring of women,
a ring of men dancing on the marble circle
where they had laboured with heavy flails, beating
the husks from the grains, heavy fans shifting
the chaff from the freed grains. One time, one way.
One image. All man’s images of man
have him at work or at play. Man labours and dances,
images himself at labour and at play.
Man creates himself in his own image.
That is what makes him, extraordinarily, man.
But we must watch at last our self-made image,
when the sun leaves it, gather its own shadow
into itself, itself into its shadows,
grow one again with nature in the night.