Verses Written In The Sand For W.H. Auden Poem by Peter Russell

In this circle that I've drawn
I place the gentle ox's horn.
My life's all worship, praise and prayer -
I do not mourn, I do not care!
Geometry was born in sand -
The new moon irrigates the land -
I who when enthusiasm
Shudders in me, note the spasm -
Write down intuition wet
In bold figures like a debt
With a circle round it, - pace,
Sensing all of time and space,
Up and down the room of life -
Till I balance Love with Strife.
These equations that I solve
Endlessly in words, involve
Contraries and opposites
Multiplied by my five wits -
Solutions various as the swarms
Of my many Protean forms -
Only resolved when man becomes
Quotient himself of all his sums;
And nature, like the gentle ox
Gently draws him in his box
Like a schoolboy's answer, at random -
Quod (right or wrong) est demonstrandum;
And She trims her lovely horns
Or dims her circlet in the dawns
Other children will awake to
(Whom She's the eternal snake to):
And they'll draw upon the sand
Circle and line with trembling hand
As I do in extended play
Murmuring each blessed day
Praise and worship, hymns and prayer -
Full of mourning, full of care