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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
A THROW OF THE DICE NEVER WILL ABOLISH CHANCE, by STEPHANE MALLARME Poem Explanation Poet's Biography First Line: A throw of the dice Last Line: All thought emits a throw of the dice Subject(s): Disasters; Fate; Luck; Shipwrecks; Destiny | |||
A THROW OF THE DICE NEVER EVEN WHEN CAST IN ETERNAL CIRCUMSTANCES AT THE HEART OF A SHIPWRECK LET IT BE that the Abyss whitened slack raging under an incline desperately soars by its own wing beforehand relapsed from wrongly steering the flight and repressing the outbursts cleaving the bounds at the root deep inside weighs the shadow hidden in the depth by this alternate sail to adjust to the spread its yawning depth as great as the hull of a ship careening from side to side THE MASTER arisen inferring from this conflagration which as one threatens the one Number which can be hesitates cadaver by his arm rather than as the old madman play the game in behalf of the waves one direct shipwreck beyond outworn calculations where the manoeuvre with age forgotten once he gripped the helm at his feet of the unanimous horizon prepares itself is tossed and merges with the fist which would grip it destiny and the winds no other Spirit to hurl it into the tempest to seal the gap and to go proudly cut off from the secret he withholds surges over the chief flows over the submissive graybeard of the man without a ship no matter where vainly ancestrally not to unclench his hand contracted above the worthless head legacy on his disappearance to some unknown the ulterior immemorial demon having from dead lands led the aged man toward this supreme conjunction with probability he the puerile shadow caressed and polished and drained and washed tamed by the wave and freed from the unyielding bones lost among the planks born of a frolic the sea by the sire enticed or the sire compelling the sea idle fortune Betrothal whose veil of illusion rekindled their obsession as the ghost of a gesture will falter will plummet madness NEVER WILL ABOLISH AS IF A simple in the silence into an approaching hovers innuendo encoiled with irony or the mystery hurled howled whirlwind of hilarity and horror over the abyss neither scattering it nor fleeing and rocks therein the virgin symbol AS IF solitary plume lost save that a toque of midnight meets or grazes it and freezes to the velvet crumpled by a dull guffaw this stiffened whiteness derisive too much in opposition to heaven not to weakly brand whosoever bitter prince of the reef dons the headdress heroic invincible but curbed by his limited human mind in turmoil anxious atoning and pubescent mute The lucid and seigneurial aigrette on the invisible brow scintillates then conceals a frail gloomy stature in her siren's torsion with impatient end scales laugh which IF of vertigo upright time for beating forked a rock false castle suddenly melted into fog which imposed a limit on infinity IT WAS stellar birth THIS WOULD BE no worse nor better but as indifferent as THE NUMBER EVEN IF IT EXISTED other than as a straggling hallucination of agony EVEN IF IT BEGAN AND EVEN IF IT CEASED hollow as negation and still born finally by some profusion spread with rarity EVEN IF SUMMED UP evidence of the sum as small as it is EVEN IF IT ENLIGHTENED CHANCE Falls the plume rhythmic suspense of the disaster to bury itself in the primitive foam from where lately his delirium surged to a peak collapsed by the indifferent neutrality of the abyss NOTHING of the memorable crisis or the event might have been completed with no possible result in view human WILL HAVE TAKEN PLACE an ordinary swell discloses the absence BUT THE PLACE any mediocre plashing as if to disperse the empty act abruptly which otherwise by its lie would have justified the perdition in these parts of the void in which all reality is dissolved EXCEPT in the heights PERHAPS at so distant a place that it fuses with infinity above human interest as pointed out to him in general by such slant by such slope of lights toward what should be the Septentrion or North A CONSTELLATION cold from neglect and disuse yet not so much that it does not count on some empty and superior plane the next collision sidereally of a final reckoning in the making watching doubting revolving blazing and meditating before it halts at some final point which consecrates it All Thought emits a Throw of the Dice | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ATTEMPTING TO ANSWER DAVID IGNATOW'S QUESTION by ROBERT BLY FROST AND HIS ENEMIES by ROBERT BLY THE WORLDS IN THIS WORLD by LAURE-ANNE BOSSELAAR UNABLE TO FIND by LAURE-ANNE BOSSELAAR TO HELEN KELLER - HUMANITARIAN, SOCIAL DEMOCRAT, GREAT SOUL by EDWIN MARKHAM DOMESDAY BOOK: FINDING OF THE BODY by EDGAR LEE MASTERS WE COME BACK by KENNETH REXROTH THE WAKING (2) by THEODORE ROETHKE A FRAGMENT by STEPHANE MALLARME |
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