Two Legends
I Black was the without eye Black the within tongue Black was the heart Black the liver, black the lungs Unable to suck in light Black the blood in its loud tunnel Black the bowels packed in furnace Black too the muscles Striving to pull out into the light Black the nerves, black the brain With its tombed visions Black also the soul, the huge stammer Of the cry that, welling, could not Pronounce its sun. II Black is the wet otter's head, lifted. Black is the rock, plunging in foam Black is the gall lying on the bed of the blood. Black is the earth-globe, one inch under, An egg of blackness Where sun and moon alternate their weathers To hatch a crow, a black rainbow Bent in emptiness over emptiness But flying
Two Legends - form Summary
Blackness Expands Into Flight
The poem is built in two numbered movements joined by the repeated declaration that things are black. The first piles up images of an enclosed body unable to reach light; the second expands outward through otter, rock, blood, earth, and sky. This structural widening turns blackness from confinement into the condition from which the final crow can emerge and fly.
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