For authorities whose hopes

are shaped by mercenaries?

   Writers entrapped by

   teatime fame and by

commuters' comforts?  Not for these

   the paper nautilus

   constructs her thin glass shell.



   Giving her perishable

souvenir of hope, a dull

   white outside and smooth-

   edged inner surface

glossy as the sea, the watchful

   maker of it guards it

   day and night; she scarcely



   eats until the eggs are hatched.

Buried eight-fold in her eight

   arms, for she is in

   a sense a devil-

fish, her glass ram'shorn-cradled freight

   is hid but is not crushed;

   as Hercules, bitten



   by a crab loyal to the hydra,

was hindered to succeed,

   the intensively

   watched eggs coming from

the shell free it when they are freed,--

   leaving its wasp-nest flaws

   of white on white, and close-



   laid Ionic chiton-folds

like the lines in the mane of

   a Parthenon horse,

   round which the arms had

wound themselves as if they knew love

   is the only fortress

   strong enough to trust to.