The Mind

Poem

by Maxwell Bodenheim 1892–1954

From Against This Age (1923)

The Mind

A curious courtship in your brain
Regulates the movements of your limbs.
Remorse, the fanciful, abandoned
Child of madness, discovers its lips
Upon the breast of a hovering Madonna.
How many poets present
The crushed tips of their hearts
Pieced carefully together as a wreath
Upon the two heads of this wooing?
Imagination is a wound
Upon the adventures of thoughts,
And one scar left behind
Is known as reality.
Will they give you robes
Threaded with orderly shimmers of repentance,
Pardoning the scar in earthly ways?

MLA

Bodenheim, Maxwell. “Poem.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/bodenheim/55/.

Chicago

Bodenheim, Maxwell. “Poem.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/bodenheim/55/.

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