JM: Why a pastiche of Hazel's tragedy, along with other sad tales? Why Hazel, in particular, when, from what I gathered, Shade has been describing a confrontation of rival persons or conflicting historical or biologicl happenings?
Time means succession, and succession, change:
Hence timelessness is bound to disarrange
Schedules of sentiment. We give advice
To widower. He has been married twice:
He meets his wives; both loved, both loving, both
Jealous of one another. [1:Shade, Sybil & Hazel]
Time means growth,
And growth means nothing in Elysian life.
Fondling a changeless child, the flax-haired wife
Grieves on the brink of a remembered pond
Full of a dreamy sky. [2:Sybil & Hazel, pond=swamp]
And, also blond,
But with a touch of tawny in the shade,
Feet up, knees clasped, on a stone balustrade
The other sits and raises a moist gaze
Toward the blue impenetrable haze. [3:Hazel]
How to begin? Which first to kiss? What toy
To give the babe? [4:?]
Does that small solemn boy
Know of the head-on crash which on a wild
March night killed both the mother and the child?
[5:Pete Dean, Sybil and Hazel]
And she, the second love, with instep bare
In ballerina black, why does she wear
The earrings from the other’s jewel case? [6:Hazel]
And why does she avert her fierce young face?[7:Hazel]
For as we know from dreams it is so hard
To speak to our dear dead!